Spatiotemporal Difference Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Tourism Urbanization in China’s Major Tourist Cities

Tourism is crucial for promoting industrial development and is an important driver of China’s new type of urbanization. A tourism urbanization index system was constructed in three dimensions: the tourism industry, urbanization, and the ecological environment. The spatial–temporal differentiation characteristics and influencing factors of tourism urbanization in 35 major tourist cities in China from 2009 to 2018 were analyzed using the state space method, standard deviation ellipse, and spatial autocorrelation analysis. The results show the following. (1) Over time, the tourism industry index displays an upward trend, the urbanization index exhibits a more obvious upward trend, and the ecological environment index fluctuates strongly. Under the influence of all three factors, the tourism urbanization index shows a fluctuating rising trend. (2) Regarding the spatial distribution pattern, the development center of tourism urbanization shifts to the southeast, and the distribution direction is northeast-southwest. There is a significant agglomeration in global spatial autocorrelation. The local spatial correlation pattern is dominated by correlation characteristics and supplemented by different characteristics. (3) In terms of influencing factors, policy and regional development strategy, tourism resource endowment, economic development level, and traffic conditions are listed in descending order of influencing degree. Finally, we put forward some suggestions.