Green development is a solution to achieve sustainable development, while tourism development is one of the best approaches to realize a green economy. As the most rapid economic development region in China, the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA) has also witnessed rapid changes in its tourism economy during 2001–2019. Here, we analyzed the spatiotemporal patterns of its tourism revenue, and further identified contributions from multiple socio-economic factors using spatial analysis tools and regression models. The total tourism revenue increased 14.35 fold, with an annual increase rate of 79.73% during 2001–2019. The proportion of tourism revenue to the GDP continuously increased from 11.57% in 2001 to 18.89% in 2019. Tourism revenue increased for all cities, with the least increasing rates in the metropolitan cities including Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou, and the largest increase rates in Ma’anshan, Hefei, Huzhou and Zhoushan. A regression and causality test indicated that different socioeconomic factors controlled the spatiotemporal variation patterns in different cities. The economic structure in the YRDUA has undergone significant shifts, with an increasing importance of tourism revenue in the GDP for most cities and a reducing discrepancy of tourism revenue among cities. Our study can enable the policy makers to be aware of the magnitude, temporal variation patterns, differences among cities and controlling factors for tourism development, and thus take suitable measures to further promote green tourism development in the YRDUA region.

A metropolitan official tourism website is an important medium to promote and communicate the metropolitan’s tourist image due to its marketing role and the reliability of its information. This paper is based on the theories of cultural capital and destination image. Through content analysis of New York and Tokyo’s official tourism websites in Chinese, this paper suggests an innovative conceptual framework of cultural capital in relation to destination image, recognizing the various types of cultural capital in building destination image. Compared with the natural resources, the quantity of cultural capital has overwhelming advantage on both websites; static and dynamic cultural capital constitute the designative image, as well as induce an appraisive image and overall image. Embodied cultural capital represents the overall image. The inheritance of culture determines the unique cultural personality of each metropolis, making a contribution to the establishment of the individual tourist image. Recommendations to destination marketing are also made.

Through the online booking platform, 10,543 big data of spatial and temporal distribution of Beijing hotel industry has been obtained in this paper. Then, the methods of GIS and the geographical detector are used to study the spatiotemporal evolution process and the influencing factors of Beijing hotel industry during 2003–2018. The results are as follows: a. During the period of 2003–2018, the hotel industry in Beijing maintained a high growth rate and had three growth peaks in 2008, 2010 and 2014. Meanwhile, major historical events, such as the Olympic Games had a significant influence on the development of the hotel industry. b. Between 2003 and 2018, the hotel industry in Beijing gradually developed from the centripetal agglomeration to aggregation + diffusion, and also from the single center to the multi-center. Besides, various hotels presented two characteristics of city orientation and scenic orientation. c. The natural geographical environment had shaped the overall pattern and characteristics of the spatial distribution of the hotel industry in Beijing, and the socio-economic factors such as commercial activities, public facilities, tourism services and traffic conditions significantly influenced the location selection of the hotel industry. Therefore, the urban center is the ideal area for the spatial layout of the hotel industry. d. Geographical detector research showed that the factors, such as administrative organs, road network density, leisure and recreational facilities, and companies have strong explanatory power for hotel location selection, which is an important reference index for hotels to select the micro location. This paper is a beneficial supplement to the existing research and has certain guiding significance for the sustainable development of Beijing hotel industry.

This study focused on the impact of high-speed rail construction on the structure of tourist flow networks in typical tourist cities. Through three consecutive questionnaire surveys and online surveys, using Gephi and GIS software to carry out a tracking study of Huangshan City. The results were as follows: (1) After high-speed rail opening and operation, the proportion of tourists within the range of 400–1200 km from the destination kept growing, and the tourist destination attraction radius expanded to about 800 km, which is more than twice than that when there was no high-speed rail. (2) The route arrangement of high-speed rail tourists is more flexible. Meanwhile, partners in tourist cities along the route are increasing, and the “circle” cooperation relationship with a city as the core has been broken, forming a “chain” cooperation structure distributed along the high-speed rail. (3) High-speed rail has an important influence on the function of the tourist flow network node, which significantly enhances the traffic function of cities along the route, but the impact on tourism function is not significant, while the traffic and tourism functions of cities along the non-high-speed rail are gradually declining.