Abstract
Coordinated development between landside transport at civil airports and aviation networks is key for determining the attractiveness and competition of tourist cities. However, only a few studies have focused on the accessibility of tourist locations around civil airports in tourist cities in China. This paper calculates the service coverage of civil airports for tourist locations in Yunnan in selected years, consisting of 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, by using an accessibility calculation method with the shortest path and a spatial analysis method in ArcGIS software. The results are compared with the structural characteristics of the aviation network in corresponding years. Additionally, some suggestions are given regarding transportation development and sustainable environmental development in tourist cities. The findings show that the service coverage of civil airports in Yunnan has gradually improved over time. Specifically, 83.41% of tourist locations can be reached within 1.5 h of driving from an airport, and all tourist destinations could be reached within 3 h in 2015. Among all civil airports, the airports in the hub city of Kunming and at world-renowned tourist destinations such as Dali and Lijiang displayed the highest airport service capabilities for tourist locations. Meanwhile, the aviation network of Yunnan Province is constantly improving with an increased number of airports and airlines, and it shows the centralization trend toward KMG. However, the mismatch is observed not only in tourist cities with hub airports, such as Kunming, but also in some cities located in remote areas (i.e., far from the central city). This finding reveals that in these tourist cities in Yunnan, the development of airport transport has not considered coordination between the airline network and the service coverage of civil airports for tourist locations. For the sustainable development of tourist cities, the equal importance of airport landside transport and the airline network in the planning and management of air transport should be emphasized.
Highlights
Air transport, the fastest way for transporting tourists to their destination cities, plays an extremely important role in tourist travel activities [1]
It is obvious that the grid area of less than 1.5 h increased at the fastest rate, from 39.82% in 2000 to 65.77% in 2015. These results suggest that the accessibility of civil airports in Yunnan Province has gradually improved
Few studies have focused on the accessibility of tourist locations around airports in tourist cities
Summary
The fastest way for transporting tourists to their destination cities, plays an extremely important role in tourist travel activities [1]. These studies identified the airline network structure [8,9], evaluated the aviation operating efficiency [1,10], and assessed and improved the business management performance of airports [11,12] Some efforts, such as opening new airline routes [13], optimizing flight schedules [14], and applying advanced technology in biometric e-gate security systems [15], have been made to improve the service quality of airline networks and airports. The benefits of these endeavors include increasing the linkage and connectivity between the origin market and destinations, which occurs in the first stage of the travel chain. The origin market is linked with the tourist destination; second, access and mobility must be provided within the destination area (e.g., a city) [16]
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