Application of GIS Technology in Chinese Tourism

The sustainable development of tourism needs the support of GIS (geographic information system) technology. The aim of this paper is to provide the basis for the Chinese tourism by summarizing the application of GIS technology. In Chinese tourism, GIS mainly applies in the following several aspects: investigation of tourism resources and the development of tourism products; tourism landscape planning including landscape mapping, spatial analysis, tourist communications, landscape visualization; tourism information management; tour guide system and so on. The results show that the GIS technology already widely applied in many aspects in Chinese tourism, many cities and scenic zones established the digital management system to make the management to be more scientific and highly effective. But, there are insufficient in many aspects such as landscape planning & design and the visual emulation. Therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to the following aspects in future research: researching and developing landscape special-purpose GIS software to make the landscape planning & design to be more scientific and easy to operate; establishing national tourism information management system to realize the resource sharing; establishing the three-dimensional visualization model of scenic zone to provide convenience for the plan, the tour guide and so on; applying GIS in the safe monitor and early warning; combining GIS with market, product, network to make tourism information face to each computer user.