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| AN ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK FOR SUPPLY-SIDE OF URBAN TOURISM BASED ON LEVELS AND HIERARCHIES |
| BAO Ji-gang, LIANG Zeng-xian |
| Center for Tourism Planning & Research, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China |
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Abstract Urban tourism is now an extremely important, world-wide form of tourism. Moreover, it has become a significant and distinctive research field in tourism geography and urban studies since the end of 1980s. This paper reviews research on the development and exploration of the nature of urban tourism, especially focuses on analytical framework for urban tourism. Early analytical frameworks are weak in comparative study on urban tourism and take all the tourist cities as the same structure or function commonly; some even fails to identify the significant features of urban tourism. A levels and hierarchies analysis framework for supply-side of urban tourism which emphasizes the signification of both the levels (urban function and status, urban theme and unique feature, core elements of tourism) of supply-side in urban tourism and the hierarchies (big cities, medium cities and small cities) of tourist cities is developed in this paper. Suzhou, Guilin and Huangshan are chosen as case cities to apply and illustrate this new analytical framwork. The research shows that demand-side depends on supply-side of urban tourism. The variation of supply-side makes evolution pattern and result of Suzhou, Guilin and Huangshan difference. Urban function and status upgrading promote urban tourism development change from traditional pattern to structural growth pattern (high earnings growth, low urban tourist increase, high tourism industrial efficiency) in Suzhou. Based on levels and hierarchies, the new analysis framework for supply-side of urban tourism applies to comparative study on urban both qualitatively and quantitatively, which provides a new powerful tool for urban tourism research to find out some new development patterns for tourist cities in the future.
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Received: 09 October 2011
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2011, Vol. 26 
