Ecotourism Resources Assessment and Development Strategy for Guizhou Province,China

The aim of this study is to understand ecotourism resources, taking into considering their quality and the comparative advantages of districts in order to develop effective strategy. Ecotourism is an important developmental model for those undeveloped regions that have superior landscape resources in ecologically fragile environments. This article has identified 181 ecotourism sites in Guizhou province, based on field work in the province. A quantitative assessment using 18 indicators was performed and, based on the results, these resources were divided into five levels. The paper also analyzed the comparative advantage of districts to reflect the developmental potential of different districts. Results show that ecotourism resources in Guihzhou province are numerous, varied in type and high quality; among them, six sites ranked level 5 represented the essence of Guizhou province. Moreover, there are four districts that are high superiority — Anshun, Qiannan and Qianxinan and Zunyi - one that is average and four that are low. According to our analysis, ecotourism development models for Guizhou province can be classified into four types; effective strategies were proposed for each.