What is a tourist functional area? Need academic definition.

Functional area generally refers to a geographical space that can gather relevant resources within a certain range and effectively play a specific function. According to the needs of tourism development, tourism functional area is a regional space set up in a certain area to realize the gathering of tourism resources and effectively play the characteristic tourism function.

1. Tourism functional area is the carrier of tourism industry agglomeration and development. Due to geographical, resource, cultural and other factors, a place determines its industrial functional characteristics. For a place or region with obvious advantages in tourism resources and industrial development, the establishment of tourism functional areas is an innovative move to give play to its advantages and strengthen industrial functions. Establishing tourism functional zones, effectively implementing rational integration of resources in a certain region, promoting orderly industrial agglomeration, building a unified tourism brand, and enhancing the driving role of tourism economy in local economy are important carriers to realize the road of characteristic development.

2. The tourism functional area aims at developing characteristic economy. Compared with non-economic functional areas which are not directly related to industrial activities, such as administrative areas and residential areas, tourism functional areas take tourism as the leading industry, concentrate on developing tourism economy and promote the development of the whole regional economy. It can be described as an economic functional area with exclusive comparative advantages and development energy and some distinctive features.

3. Tourism functional areas are characterized by diversity. Although tourism is the main business of tourist functional zones, the contents and forms of tourist functional zones in different places will be very different. At present, there are not many tourist functional zones named directly by zoning adjustment in China, but the development trend is obvious. Some characteristic tourist areas have already taken shape as tourist functional areas. In the future, tourism functional areas will present the diversity characteristics of different content types such as ecology, city, commerce and leisure. The geographical scope of different tourist functional areas is also different. Eco-tourism functional area is relatively large, generally around 200 square kilometers, spanning several towns. The urban tourism functional area is relatively small, but it generally covers one or two streets and many urban communities. In contrast, the geographical scope of business and entertainment tourism functional areas is small.

4. Tourism functional area is a form of modern tourism format. The emergence of tourism functional zones reflects the changes of tourism formats and market demand. With the improvement of living standards and the arrival of the era of national tourism and leisure, tourists have higher requirements for the service quality of tourist destinations and objectively lose interest in "small-scale" tourist areas. Relying on the tourism functional area, a number of high-grade tourism products and supporting facilities can be planned and built in a relatively large area to meet the needs of consumers. The establishment of tourism functional zones will change the tourism format, attract more consumers and promote local economic and social development. Tourism functional area will become one of the important forms of modern tourism development in the future.