Analysis on Tourism Competitiveness of Six World Cultural Heritage Sites in Sichuan Province

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1 Analysis on Tourism Competitiveness of Six World Cultural Heritage Sites in Sichuan Province Yan Li 1, 2 1 School of Economic & Manageme, Northwest University, Xi'an , China 2 School of Business, Xi'an Iernational University, Xi'an , China Abstract Taking the six world cultural heritage sites in Sichuan Province as an example, this paper conducts an in-depth analysis on the competitiveness of tourism among heritage sites. This paper qualitatively analyzes the tourism competitiveness of heritage sites from the perspectives of number of tourists and ticket proceeds. On this basis, this paper establishes an evaluation index system for quaitative analysis, calculates the proportion of each factor through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and ultimately obtains scores of competitiveness of heritage sites. The study of this paper holds that Jiuzhaigou Valley is the most competitive among the six heritage sites in Sichuan Province, followed by Huanglong Scenic and Historic Ierest Area (Huanglong) and Mou Emei. Keywords: Sichuan Province, Tourism in heritage sites, Competitiveness. 1. Iroduction In rece years, with the economic developme of China, the increase of resides income level and the opening up of economy, the tourism economy has undergone rapid developme in China with the overall scale becoming larger and larger (Mccain and Ray, 2003; Dwyer, 2000). After many years of developme, China s tourism industry ranked the fifth in the world in terms of foreign currency earnings and number of tourists in 2001 (Davis, 2006). However, along with the rapid developme of tourism in heritage sites, many problems have emerged in China s tourism industry (Huybers and Bennett, 2003), such as overheated exploitation, imbalanced developme, low benefit and unsustainable developme (Gooroochurn and Sugiyarto, 2005). At the same time, the problem of competition among the tourism in all the world cultural heritage sites in China has attracted atteion from scholars (Li et al., 2010; Khan, 2017). Sichuan Province boasts many world heritage sites with rich tourism resources (Corsane, 2017; Jones and Munday, 2007). It has nine world-class heritage sites, including Wolong nature Reserve, Mou Jiajin, Mou Siguniang, Jiuzhaigou Valley, Huanglong, Leshan Gia Buddha, Mou Emei, Dujiangyan Irrigation System (Dujiangyan) and Mou Qingcheng. The first are lack in information, so this paper takes the last six as an example to conduct an in-depth analysis on the competitiveness of tourism among world cultural heritage sites. In the specific study, this paper first qualitatively analyzes the tourism competitiveness of heritage sites from the perspectives of number of tourists and ticket proceeds in Sichuan Province. On this basis, this paper establishes an evaluation index system for quaitative analysis on the competitiveness among the six heritage sites, and ultimately ranks the competitiveness of six heritage sites according to the quaitative analysis results. 2. QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS ON TOURISM COMPETITIVENESS OF WORLD CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES IN SICHUAN PROVINCE The six heritage sites in Sichuan Province are among the best world tourism heritage sites and also belong to the jurisdiction of Sichuan Province. The geographical proximity makes tourism in these six world cultural heritage sites compete with and threaten each other (Singh, 2004; Jiang, 2015). Due to the capture-effect of the stronger tourism heritage sites on the weaker ones (Poria, 2011; Nica, 2015) and the limitation of tourists time and energy (Xing, 2014) it is inevitable for heritage sites to be compared. The choice of tourists will also determine the level of competition among the heritage sites. 61

2 2.1 Number of tourists As shown in Table 1 and Figure 1, the number of tourists who visited the six world heritage sites in Sichuan Province in is listed. From a horizoal perspective, the number of tourists to Jiuzhaigou Valley was at the middle and upper level with more than 2,000,000 tourists in The number of tourists to Huanglong, Mou Qingcheng and Dujiangyan was at the middle and lower level. Huanglong and Dujiangyan were a little better with 1,000,000 tourists in In 2007, the number of tourists to Dujiangyan had a new breakthrough with over 2,000,000 tourists for the first time. The tourism in Leshan Gia Buddha and Mou Emei was at the high level with more than 2,000,000 tourists respectively in 2004 and the former was even better from the trend. Figure 1. Visitors of Six world heritage sites in Sichuan Table 1 statistics of tourist reception of six world heritage sites in Sichuan province (unit: 10 thousand people) Jiuzhaigou Huanglong Leshandafo Emei Moutanin Dujiangyan Qingcheng Moutain From a longitudinal perspective, the number of tourists to the six world tourism sites during showed an upward trend. The number of tourists to Jiuzhaigou Valley steadily rose while the number of tourists to Huanglong was small and not quite steady and turned better in The number of tourists to Leshan Gia Buddha steadily rose with a breakthrough in On the whole, the number of tourists to Leshan Gia Buddha was second only to that of Mou Emei whose overall reception number was in the forefro and the steadily grew year by year. Although Dujiangyan made a breakthrough in the number of tourists in 2007, it was at the middle and lower level among the six sites. In terms of the number of tourists, Mou Qingcheng was the worst one. 2.2 Ticket proceeds The Table 2 and Figure 2 show the ticket proceeds of the six world cultural heritage sites in Sichuan Province in Table 2 Tourism ticket revenue of the six heritage sites (Unit: 10 thousand yuan) Jiuzhaigou Huanglong Leshandafo

3 Emei Moutanin Dujiangyan Qingcheng Moutain Figure 2. Ticket revenue of Six world heritage sites in Sichuan From a horizoal perspective, ticket proceeds of Jiuzhaigou Valley and Huanglong respectively topped first and second. Besides, ticket proceeds of Jiuzhaigou Valley were about twice higher than that of Huanglong. Ticket proceeds of Leshan Gia Buddha, Dujiangyan and Mou Qingcheng were the middle and lower level. Ticket proceeds of Huanglong were at the lower level while Mou Qingcheng always ranked at the final place. From a longitudinal perspective, ticket proceeds of Jiuzhaigou Valley topped first in , far higher than those of other tourism heritage sites. Ticket proceeds of Huanglong ranked second and steadily increased year by year but its growth rate was a little smaller than that of Jiuzhaigou Valley. Ticket proceeds of Leshan Gia Buddha had no obvious increase in , always ranking fifth. Mou Emei was at the middle level with a large increase in 2004, ranking third as a whole. Ticket proceeds of Dujiangyan were higher than those of Leshan Gia Buddha in but were exceeded by Leshan Gia Buddha after Ticket proceeds of Mou Qingcheng always ranked at the final place with low cardinal number and growth rate. 3. QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS ON TOURISM COMPETITIVENESS OF WORLD CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES IN SICHUAN PROVINCE 3.1 Evaluation indexes In the process of quaitative analysis, the evaluation index system is first established, and the selected indexes are divided io three hierarchies as shown in Table 3. Table 3 Index of Tourism Competitiveness Model layer1 layer2 index B1 Accessibility C1 Traffic condition C2 Psychological distance B2 Infrastructure C3 Tourism infrastructure investme C4 Number of hotel rooms B3 Tourism scale C5 Average tourism income in last three years C6 Average number of tourists in last three years A Comprehensive C7 The number of ways of travel marketing Competitiveness B4 Tourism marketing C8 Investme in tourism marketing C9 Tourism network of information B5 Tourism soft C10 Tourist complais environme C11 Tourism crisis manageme system B6 Scenic attraction C12 Scenic rating C13 Air quality B7 Human Resources C14 Ratio of employees educated by college and above 63

4 3.2 Determination of the weight of evaluation indexes AHP is adopted to determine the weight of the impact factors. 1. Construction of judgme matrix The judgme matrix indicates the relative nce of elemes in the hierarchy to the eleme A in the previous hierarchy as shown in the following table: A B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7 B1 B11 B12 B13 B14 B15 B16 B17 B2 B21 B22 B23 B24 B25 B26 B27 B3 B31 B32 B33 B34 B35 B36 B37 B4 B41 B42 B43 B44 B45 B46 B47 B5 B51 B52 B53 B54 B55 B56 B57 B6 B61 B62 B63 B64 B65 B66 B67 B7 B71 B72 B73 B74 B75 B76 B77 Where, B ij represes the relative nce of factor B i to B j for A. According to Safety s study on the scale method of AHP, 1-9 scale method and other 26 scale methods are adopted, but 1-9 scale method is more reasonable by comparing positive scale, Therefore, this paper used 1-9 scale method. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and their reciprocal are used to determine standardization. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 represe as equally, somewhat, significaly, very, and extremely and their reciprocal have adverse meanings as shown in Table 4. Relative n ce Extreme ly Much more Clearly Table 4 Importance scale Slightly Equally Slightly less unimport a very unimport a highly unimport a Calibrati on value /3 1/5 1/7 1/9 2. Single hierarchical arrangeme Single hierarchical arrangeme is the rank of the relative nce of the factors in each level to the previous level, which can be attributed to the calculation of the maximum eigenvalue and eigenvector of the judgme matrix, that is, for the judgme matrix B, the calculation is satisfied: BW=λ max W Where, λ max is the largest one among the eigenvalues of B, and W is the corresponding normalized eigenvector of λ max. The sub-vector W i of W is the ordinal value of the corresponding eleme in this judgme hierarchy. The paper takes indexes in C1-C2 hierarchies as an example to explain how to construct the matrix: first, the relative nce of each factor is obtained by consulting the releva albums and according to the releva research methods. Then the judgme matrix can be constructed according to the relative nce. Then, all the eigenvalues and eigenvectors can be obtained by Matlab software and the maximum eigenvalue is recorded as λ max and the eigenvector corresponding to λ max is recorded as V. The eigenvector is the weight W of this hierarchy after standardization. Finally, the weight of the factor in the whole evaluation system can be obtained by using the weight of the factor in this hierarchy and the weight calculated by the same method in one hierarchy. 3.3 Standardization of index data In the index system, the dimension of each index data is very differe with differe orders of magnitude, so the values of each index need to be standardized. Through such a non-dimensional treatme, the impact caused by differe units of measureme can be eliminated and the evaluation value can be converted io a new index 64

5 value that coains the information of the original index with the same order of magnitude. This paper uses the maximum value method for standardization because this method is easy for iuitive comparison. The maximum data value is 1 and the value is between 0 and 1. The formula is: Z i = d i max (di ) Where, Z i is the standardized value, d i is the original value, and i represes the ith evaluation index. 3.4 Scores of competitiveness Method of weighted mean is one of the most commonly used methods for calculating the scores of competitiveness of tourism heritage sites. It is widely used in the competitiveness analysis and evaluation of tourism in heritage sites. The weight obtained above and the standardized index values are put io the following n formula: F= Z i. W i=1 i Where, F represes the overall tourism competitiveness of the world cultural heritage sites, Z i is the standardized score, W i represes the weight value, i is the i-th evaluation index, and n represes the total number of the evaluation indexes. The weight of indexes is shown in Table 5. A Comprehensive Competitiveness Table 5 Table of index weights layer1 layer2 index Index weight B1 Accessibility C1 Traffic condition C2 Psychological distance B2 Infrastructure C3 Tourism infrastructure investme C4 Number of hotel rooms C5 Average tourism income in last three B3 Tourism scale years C6 Average number of tourists in last three years B4 Tourism marketing B5 Tourism soft environme B6 Scenic attraction B7 Human Resources The standardized values of indexes are shown in Table 6. C7 The number of ways of travel marketing C8 Investme in tourism marketing C9 Tourism network of information C10 Tourist complais C11 Tourism crisis manageme system C12 Scenic rating C13 Air quality C14 Ratio of employees educated by college and above Table 6 Standardized value of index Index Jiuzhaigou Huanglong Leshandafo Emei Moutain Dujiangyan Qingcheng Moutain C C C C C C C

6 C C C C C C C According to the data in Table 5 and Table 6, the scores of tourism competitiveness of the six world cultural heritage sites in Sichuan Province are as follows: Jiuzhaigou Valley: F1=0.923 Huanglong: F2=0.724 Leshan Gia Buddha: F3=0.676 Mou Emei: F4=0.722 Dujiangyan: F5=0.587 Mou Qingcheng: F6=0.565 It can be seen that the order of competitiveness of the six heritage sites is Jiuzhaigou Valley > Huanglong > Mou Emei > Leshan Gia Buddha > Dujiangyan > Mou Qingcheng. 4. CONCLUSIONS Based on the analysis and calculation of tourism competitiveness of six world cultural heritage sites in Sichuan Province, the following conclusions have been drawn: First, among the many factors affecting the tourism in the world cultural heritage sites, accessibility has the highest weight and is the most crucial impact factor followed by factor infrastructure ; and the third impact factor is tourism size. In addition, the nce of human resources surpasses the attractiveness of scenic areas, indicating that tourists are demanding more on the quality of personnel in the tourism industry. Second, among the indexes at the third hierarchy, traffic condition ranks first. Therefore, poor accessibility in the competitiveness of Jiuzhaigou Valley and Huanglong tourism heritage sites is an obstacle for further developme. The investme volume in tourist facilities come second, which is where the six heritage sites in Sichuan Province need to be further strengthened. In the past three years, its average tourism revenue has ranked third. The fourth is the proportion of personnel with college education and above, which further confirms the nce of human resources in the tourism industry. Third, in terms of the overall competitiveness, Jiuzhaigou Valley ranks first with absolute superiority. Specifically, the 14 indexes affecting competitiveness all rank first except traffic condition, psychological distance, number of tourists and number of hotel rooms; Huanglong ranks second followed by Mou Emei with a little weaker disadvaage; Leshan Gia Buddha, Dujiangyan and Mou Qingcheng respectively rank fourth, fifth and sixth. Fourth, it can be seen from the table of weights and standardized indexes affecting the tourism competitiveness of heritage sites that there are some problems in the tourism of the six world cultural heritage sites in Sichuan Province, which may be key obstacles to tourism competitiveness and needs further improveme. REFERENCES Corsane G. (2017). Are Eco museum principles an appropriate way to promote heritage manageme and heritage tourism in relation to indigenous communities and in post-colonial coexts? Scripta Materialia, 66

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