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| TOURISM CLUSTER: THE MICRO-RESEARCH FIELD OF TOURISM GEOGRAPHY |
| FENG Wei-hong1,2, MIAO Chang-hong2 |
1. School of City and Tourism, Taiyuan Normal College, Taiyuan 030012, China;
2. Research Center of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, China |
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Abstract Industrial cluster is a hot point followed by economics, geography, management science and sociology. Tourism cluster is being attached importance to by scholars from different research fields recently. It is helpful to explain the agglomeration mechanism and space process of tourism cluster from economical and geographical angles. And also, the defect, ignored by the scholars in the field of ralations and space layout of tourism, could be made up. So the research field of tourism geography should be broadened.
The article analyses the proof of tourism cluster existing, the definition and the research condition of tourism cluster from the sphere of learning and practice both at home and abroad now. After integrating the scholar's point at home and abroad, the authors think that tourism cluster is the agglomeration of the tourism industry with the definite scale, division of labors on the basis of specialization and the combination of competition and cooperation between businesses.
The foreign authors analyse the competitive advantages with Porter's diamond model, study the employment and the labor allocation of tourism cluster, judge the existence of tourism cluster with location quotient, research the business network, social capital, the relations and innovation between competition and cooperation in tourism cluster and the role of tourism cluster in tourism destination and region tourism economy, etc. The domestic authors explain the scientific definition and system frame of tourism cluster and the basic theory of tourism cluster such as the character, formation, type and internal structure.
The article believes it is very necessary to study the theory of tourism cluster with the theory and way of tourism geography. At the same time, it is of the significance to enrich the subject content of tourism geography. The basic characteristic of tourism cluster is the tourism industry agglomeration and the relation between tourism industries. The tourism geography has advantages at comprehensiveness, space and application to research tourism cluster. At last, it's pointed out the formation mechanism of tourism cluster, the relation between competition and cooperation among tourism business in tourism cluster, innovation mechanism and the space structure and layout of tourism cluster and the relation between tourism cluster and the regional economic are important contents in the fields tourism geography. Meanwhile, many cases to support the researches should be emphasized. And the tourism geography scholars should pay enough attention to these cases at home as soon as possible.
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Received: 12 April 2007
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2008, Vol. 23 
