1. Department of Geography and Science, School of living and Geography and Science, Qinghai Normal University, Xining, 810008, China;
2. Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100101, China
Abstract：With lots of tourists surging to Tibet, the tourism industry of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has been promoted greatly since the Qinghai-Tibet Railway operated. However, high altitude is not only typical but also the bottleneck of the development of the tourism industry of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. High altitude makes great differences in nature environment, the physiological response of human beings varies with altitude, and different physical environment restricts the development of society and economy, all those lead to great differences in the physiological response of tourists, service quality tourists received and tourism environment capacity in the areas of various altitudes. Therefore, the article first comes up with three regions for plateau tourists under analysis:1) Adaptive Area. The altitude is from 2000 meters to 3000 meters above sea level. Xining-LAN Zhou region and Kunming region will be the best adaptive regions for Plateau tourism. 2) Conventional Area with altitude of 3000-5000 meters above sea level. 3) Special Area with altitude of over 5000 meters. Then puts forward the framework of "step by step" tourism model of Qinghai-Tibet plateau.
