An Approach to Seasonality of Tourist Flows Between Coastland Resorts and Mountain Resorts: Examples of Sanya, Beihai, Mt. Putuo, Mt. Huangshan and Mt. Jiuhua

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  • 1. Department of Geography, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China;
    2. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China

Received date: 2002-01-25

  Revised date: 2002-07-12

  Online published: 2002-11-25

Supported by

National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 49871027; Core Teachers Project Funded by the Ministry of Education in 1999

Abstract

In this paper, data of monthly distribution of domestic tourist flows in recent years are applied to analyzing the seasonal characteristics of domestic tourist flows both in coastland resorts such as Sanya, Beihai, Mt. Putuo and mountain resorts such as Mt. Huangshan and Mt. Jiuhua. The seasonal distribution curves of tourist flows of Sanya and Mt. Jiuhua show the patterns of“3-peak-2-valley”and“2-peak-2-valley”respectively, while those of Beihai, Mt. Putuo and Mt. Huangshan all show a similar“3-peak-3-valley”pattern. As for the assembling index R of tourist flows, the highest one appears in Mt. Huangshan, with an average value of 5.7 in recent years; while that in Sanya is the lowest one, with an average value of 1.3. Besides, the R values of both Mt. Huangshan and Sanya vary slightly and maintain stability to a certain degree; while those of Beihai, Mt. Putuo and Mt. Jiuhua stay between the values of the above two sites, with a decreasing tendency in recent years in general. By analyzing the causes of seasonal variation of tourist flows in these tourist attractions, we conclude that they are affected by both natural seasonal factors and social seasonal factors. The former include mainly climate suitability, precipitation, etc., apart from which the temperature of seawater and impacts of tropical cyclone movement also play a very important role in coastland tourist resorts. The latter include mainly public holidays and residents' tour customs, besides which religious festivals also constitute an important factor affecting religious mountain resorts. Based on the above analyses, the authors have also further drawn some conclusions as follows: 1) Natural seasonal factors play the leading part in causing seasonal variation of tourist flows in natural attractions or natural-cultural attractions, while social seasonal factors only add some minor effects to the change on the basis of tourist seasonality caused by natural seasonal factors. 2) Among the five tourist attractions, the seasonal variations of those coastland resorts in southern China such as Sanya and Beihai vary slightly throughout the four seasons, act as a fairly strong tourism function as leisure resorts and thus still have a tendency to narrow the seasonal differences of tourist flows in the future; while those mountain resorts such as Mt. Huangshan retain a strong sightseeing function, which makes it much harder to alleviate the great variation in different seasons. 3) In a word, seasonal variation of tourist flows is an inherent characteristic in the development of tourist attractions. The great differences between peak period and off-season time can only be alleviated through series of effective countermeasures so as to enhance the economic, social and ecological benefits of tourist attractions.

Cite this article

LU Lin, XUAN Guofu, ZHANG Jinhe, YANG Xiaozhong, WANG Degen . An Approach to Seasonality of Tourist Flows Between Coastland Resorts and Mountain Resorts: Examples of Sanya, Beihai, Mt. Putuo, Mt. Huangshan and Mt. Jiuhua[J]. Acta Geographica Sinica, 2002 , 57(6) : 731 -740 . DOI: 10.11821/xb200206014

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