Comprehensive Evaluation of Urban Tourism Competitiveness in the Yangtze River Delta and Its Spatial Patterns Analysis

Using data in socioeconomics, tourism and infrastructure of 29 cities in the Yangtze River Delta in 2010, this study built a comprehensive tourism competitiveness assessment system based on principles of dominant factors and maneuverability. Besides making an assessment of urban tourism in the Yangtze River Delta with entropy weight method,we also explored spatial patterns of tourism competitiveness in the Yangtze River Delta with GIS spatial analysis method and uncovered the deep reasons. At last, we tested the result using tourism attractiveness index. Results showed that:(1)Urban tourism competitiveness is influenced by the integrative effects of urban development competitiveness, tourism resources competitiveness and support competitiveness, of which tourism resources competitiveness has the largest contribution. On the whole, the Yangtze River Delta has a high competitiveness.(2) Spatial variance of tourism competitiveness in the Yangtze River Delta is considerable, presenting a spatial layer pattern with Shanghai, Suzhou,Hangzhou as the center and Nanjing, Wuxi, Ningbo, Shaoxing as the sub- centers. Big disparity exists between the core area and the fringe area.(3) The spatial pattern of urban tourism competitiveness is consistent with the one of tourism attractive index and has obvious correlativity. Where the tourism competitiveness is bigger, the tourism attractiveness index is bigger, vice verse.