Analysis of Jiangsu tourism development potential: A comprehensive perspective of traffic accessibility and tourism resources

Abstract

The development of tourism destinations depends on the development of tourism resources and the convenience of tourism transportation. Transportation is the pivotal element which connects the tourist with the destination, unifying the origin-destination elements and thereby is a dynamic element in the tourism system. If tourism resources are the pull power of tourist flow, tourism transportation will be the tourist flow's ‘medium’. Both the development of tourism resources and the convenience of tourism transportation are the most important indicators to measure the development of regional tourism. This article considers 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu province and 35 cities which are the first/second tourist markets of Jiangsu or neighboring cities of Jiangsu. Using weighted distance accessibility index, the traffic accessibility of 13 prefecture-level cities is calculated. The result shows that province-wide tourism traffic accessibility is fine. It indicates that there is a certain degree of aggregation phenomena of tourism traffic accessibility by using spatial autocorrelation measurement. Combination of tourism resources, this article builds a regional tourism development potential index in a comprehensive perspective of tourism transport and tourism resources. According to the results of cluster analysis and discriminant analysis, the southern Jiangsu region, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, is still the area of advantage in tourism sector. The comprehensive regional tourism development potential index also indicates this result. This article also finds that tourism transport is no longer an obstacle to tourism development in Jiangsu province, tourism development are more dependent on the regional tourism resources in this modern information technology and convenient transportation society. This article indicates that transport provision is a permissive factor in Jiangsu's tourist/recreation development, maybe itself a product of increasing mobility, leisure time and affluence. However, this does not mean that transport is not as important as before in Jiangsu. Tourism continues to grow at a significant rate in Jiangsu province and finding new and diverse opportunities for such activities may mean a greater concern for the economic use of existing forms of transport for tourism.