As the importance of tourism economy for a region's economic development is standing out,tourism competitiveness becomes an important indicator to measure a region's economic development.In this paper,based on the related researches of other scholars,with the data from the China Tourism Statistical Yearbook as the basic support,a tourism competitiveness system covering 44 indicators of 6 items including industry scale competitiveness,consumption competitiveness,extraversion competitiveness and industry development competitiveness was constructed,and the competitiveness of 31 provinces and cities in China during 1996 and 2004 was comparatively studied.It was found that there were obvious differences among the tourism competitiveness of different provinces,and generally speaking,the comprehensive competitiveness showed a two-way development trend;from the view of the individual competitiveness,the scale competitiveness of the tourism showed a polarization trend;there were obvious changes in the consumption competitiveness;the extraversion as a whole has been improved;the industry development competitiveness has been steadily promoted;the reception ability of different provinces differed greatly and the advantages of scientific and technological progress was becoming more and more significant.
