Abstract Tourist flow has long been a basic issue of tourism geography. Researches on spatial patterns of tourist flow have been very popular since 1950s. After literature review, the authors classify the spatial patterns of tourist flow into three basic theories which are concentric zone theory, centre-periphery theory and spatial diffusion theory. Concentric zone theory stresses on the regular, centripetal and hierarchical structure from the inner zone to the outlying zone. Centre-periphery theory reflects the relationship between the core areas and the peripheral areas from dependence perspective and spatial diffusion theory research the spatial pattern, flowing process of tourist flow from dynamic angle. This paper makes a sketch map from two dimensional scales to visualize the basic spatial patterns of tourist flow. One dimensional scale covers a hierarchical ordering which is "single point dimension, point to point dimension and systematic dimension". The other dimensional scale spans a spectrum, which reveals the above three basic spatial patterns of tourist flow from left to right. The research finds that the problems existing in tourism studies which are that (1)there exists confusion of "regional perspective" for tourist flow and "individualistic perspective" for single tourist for a long time. Tourist flow should be studied from regional perspective; (2) definitions of tourist origin and tourist destination from regional perspective is confused; (3) "dual trap" is existing in a wide range in spatial patterns of tourist flow but scientific analysis of differences in the functional tourist areas (FTA) are absent; (4) unilateral flowing presented in contemporary studies contradicts with the practical bidirectional inter-regional flow; (5) the research on the direction of tourism flow diffusing only adopted the qualitative method, and only provided empirical evaluations on the statistic of tourist flow and tourism phenomenon; (6) few research focus on spatial diffusion in the study of tourism spatial pattern, especially for multi-destination travel behavior.
2010, Vol. 25 
