Abstract：Some features of organism, such as birth, growth, life cycle, niche, territory and social hierarchy etc, characterize tourist destinations, although tourist destinations are not any kind of organism actually.However, this article regards tourist destinations as a kind of special organism and analyzes the spatial relationship among them from an ecological point of view.The authors try to introduce the ecological interspecific theory into tourism with a view to reveal the spatial relationship among the tourist destinations.The paper consists of four parts:
Firstly, this article briefly introduces the ecological interspecific theory.
Second, beginning with the subsistence and development of tourist destination, this article introduces the ecological interspecific theory into tourism to analyze the subsistence and development relationship among the tourist destinations and abstracts some types:1.Competition, including three types:exclusion, both sides sufferance and co-evolution;2.Mutualism, including two types:dependence and independence;3.Epiphytism;4.Parasitism.
Third, this article analyzes the essential feature of the above types and abstract some pat terns of these types by illustrated diagram in some case studies.Based on the above analysis, this article draws a practical conclusion:1.mutualism and Epiphytism are positive or at least harmless to every tourist destination;Competition and Parasitism are negative to every tourist destination or at least to one of them.2.Essentially, the difference among Mutualism, Epiphytism and Parasitism is only the difference of the quality of tourist resources in tourist destinations.If the quality of tourist resources in each tourist destination is good, the relationship among them is Mutualism;if the quality of some destination's resources is good while the others' is poor, the relationship among them is Epiphytism;if the quality of some destinations' resources is good while that of the others' is too poor to subsist, the relationship among them is Parasitism.3.All types of the spatial relationship among tourist destination can be transferred from one to another.
Finally, the paper indicates the practical significance of this study in the evaluation process of tourist resources, tourism planning and the development strategy of tourism.
