Abstract:

As one of the important tourism products, lake tourism develops rapidly. However, lake tourism research significantly lags behind its practice. This article analyzes the development trend and tourism efficiency of natural-level lake scenic area in China, and reveals the efficiency characteristics and spatial distribution characteristics. Based on which we divide it into four types, and finally puts forward the development measures and suggestions. The results show that: 1) the number and tourism income of natural-level lake scenic area are growing, lake tourism resource development has transferred from famous lake to general lakes. Tourism product types are diversified, while regional differences are fairly obvious. 2) The tourism efficiencies of natural-level lake scenic area are relatively low, the majority are still in the process of increasing returns of scales. Through decompositions of overall efficiency, the results show that the scale efficiencies are higher while pure technical efficiencies are lower. The interpretation ability of the pure technical efficiency on the overall efficiency ability is stronger than the scale efficiency, whose correlation coefficient is 0.722, is the major reason for the low overall efficiency. 3) We divide these 38 natural-level lake scenic area into four types according to the efficiency characteristics. The formation with higher efficiency is correlated with development period of lake resources, tourism capital investment and location conditions. The fourteen lake scenic spots have two of the following four characteristics at least. First of all, they are famous in the whole country or the whole region. As the high quality tourism resources, lakes can be developed to tourism products with large market competitiveness with higher output. Secondly, due to the early development period, traffic facilities and service facilities of the lake scenic spots are perfect, the experience and technology of product maintenance and marketing are more mature, also, the lake scenic spots are liable to contact with the neighboring scenic spots to form regional tourism routes. Thirdly, the moderate lake area is help to development, and the centralized production factors could enhance the level of construction operations. Last but not at least, the high economic development level of the cities which the 14 lake scenic spots rely on, the mature tourism market of these cities, the close distance between lake scenic spots and the central downtowns, as well as the good development of other types of tourism products nearby, make lake tourism products have the opportunity to merge with other types of tourism product to better development.

Key words: efficiency evaluation, tourism efficiency, type classification, ascension path, lake-type Chinese national scenic area