Team tourist flow spatial networks in the Yangtze River Delta based on the line recommended by travel agencies

The study of tourist flow is a core issue of tourism geography. Research on the characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta's overall space network of tourist flow as well as the regional status of each link city within the network provides supports for the planning and development of geographical layout and its optimization. The selected travel agencies from 30 cities of the Yangtze River Delta have recommended a one- day tour,a two- day tour and a multiday tour with 4 500 tourism lines. The current research aims to analyze spatial network characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta from three aspects,social network theory and methods.The three aspects include:single node tourism destination,multi- node of city tourism destination and overall spatial network. We found that the position of each link city differentiates with each other in the regional tourist flow space network. The core status of the key cities is much more prominent,and the hierarchical characteristic of the regional tourist flow space network is significant. This feature tends to be more observable as travel time increases continuously. Taking Hangzhou and Suzhou as an example,both of which are key tourism destination cities and transit cities of great importance,each of the cities plays a critical role in organizing tourism lines.However,the level of activity of cities in regional tourist flow such as Zhenjiang- Yangzhou and Zhoushan-Shaoxing is relatively high. The results indicate that the development of regional tourist flow space network will be dynamic because of influences from various factors such as tourism transportation and major tourism events.