RESEARCH PROGRESS OF SPATIAL PATTERNS OF TRAVEL ITINERARIES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES
SHI Chun-yun1, ZHU Chuan-geng1, ZHAO Yu-zong2, ZHU Ming1, YUAN Xin1
1. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Xuzhou Normal University, Xuzhou 221009, China;
2. College of Tourism, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Abstract：As a typical social, cultural and economic geographical phenomena with spatial attributes, travel patterns relate to the nodes of resorts or destinations, lines combination of travel routes, and surface extension of destination region system. Spatial models of travel pattern with different scales include macroscale inter-destinations and microscale intra-destinations. The former refers to visitors' travel among different international or interregional destinations which can be generally divided into single destination travel pattern and multi-destination travel pattern. It is obvious that single and multi-destination trips should be differentiated and should be modeled separately. The latter concerns the spatial movement patterns of visitors within a destination. Different tourism destinations play different roles according to their locations within the itinerary patterns or functional hierarchies. Visitors are found to exhibit different behavioral characteristics in different travel patterns. Qualitative and quantitative methods, such as correlation analysis and regression analysis, have been applied to explore the factors influencing on multi-destination trip behavior, which can be classified into tourist characteristics and destination characteristics. Some researchers try to find appropriate theories to explain the travel pattern, for example, cumulative attraction theory, distance decay theory and time budgets theory. Based on the above analysis, the authors put forward some suggestions for the future researches. Firstly, Multi-destination trips represent the choice of a cluster of destinations. The factors which will influence the travelers to choose different spatial patterns of travel itineraries. Secondly, the travel itinerary cooperation models of different destinations. The role of the destination plays is related to its benefit from the travel itinerary. Thirdly, the theoretical bases and applicable models for such multi-destination trip pattern. Finally, the authors point out that studies on relationships between origins and destinations and quantitative models among destinations are needed to be improved.
