THE EVOLUTION AND FORMATION MECHANISM OF MICE TOURISM CLUSTER IN GUANGZHOU
ZHANG Ling1, WU Yong-qiang2
1. The Tourism School, Guangdong University of Business Studies, Guangzhou 510320, China;
2. Guangzhou Lingnan International Enterprise Group Co., Ltd, Guangzhou 510015, China
Abstract：It is important to study tourism cluster that could increase competitiveness, improve economic development and progress spatial structure of the tourist industry. There are some spatial agglomerations from development of tourist industry the whole world. According to the researches from home and abroad, lots of scholars pay attention to Large-and Meso-Scale of tourism clusters, but micro-scale of tourism clusters were neglected. Researches on tourism cluster are mainly about relationships between industry cluster and competitive advantage, cultivation and evaluation of tourism cluster. Only few scholars studied evolution and formatting mechanism of tourism cluster. Some studies have found that MICE promote conventions of tourist factors in special areas of the city. MICE tourism of Guangzhou is one of the most developed cities in China, and it is an important city among central cities of our country from its convention facilities to numbers of conventions and exhibitions. The Canton Fair is one of the longest history conventions and it affects urban development and urban tourist development of Guangzhou. On the base of defining MICE tourism cluster, the paper tries to find the process of tourism cluster and formatting mechanism in Guangzhou. The study found: firstly, the Canton Fair promoted MICE tourism cluster in Guangzhou; secondly, influencing factors are different in the different stage of MICE tourism cluster. In the clustering network stage, the un-scale effect and the Canton Fair moving to Pazhou exhibition center resulted in the stabilization of numbers of tourist enterprises. Thirdly, exhibition is core of MICE tourism cluster so that exhibition moving from the central area of the city to urban fringe will lead to spatial variability of MICE tourism cluster. At last, with the Canton Fair completely moving to Pazhou exhibition center, MICE tourism cluster near Liuhua exhibition center will appear two results after 2008.
