Regionalization Analysis and Mapping for the Source and Sink of Tourist Flows

Abstract

At present, population mobility for the purpose of tourism has become a popular phenomenon. As it becomes easier to capture big data on the tourist digital footprint, it is possible to analyze the respective regional features and driving forces for both tourism sources and destination regions at a macro level. Based on the data of tourist flows to Nanjing on five short-period national holidays in China, this study first calculated the travel rate of tourist source regions (315 cities) and the geographical concentration index of the visited attractions (51 scenic spots). Then, the spatial autocorrelation metrics index was used to analyze the global autocorrelation of the travel rates of tourist source regions and the geographical concentration index of the tourist destinations on five short-term national holidays. Finally, a heuristic unsupervised machine-learning method was used to analyze and map tourist sources and visited attractions by adopting the travel rate and the geographical concentration index accordingly as regionalized variables. The results indicate that both source and sink regions expressed distinctive regional differentiation patterns in the corresponding regional variables. This study method provides a practical tool for analyzing regionalization of big data in tourist flows, and it can also be applied to other origin-destination (OD) studies.