都市圈是人类活动的重要空间和国家发展的主要平台。发展都市圈旅游是中国将旅游业培育为国民经济战略性支柱产业和都市圈加快转变经济发展方式的必由之路。都市圈旅游已成为人文地理学研究的前沿领域。本项目拟立足创新的旅游发展观，综合运用地理学、经济学、城市规划、管理学、社会学、生态学、旅游学等学科理论与方法，以京津冀、长江三角洲、珠江三角洲都市圈为主要实证对象，进行中国都市圈旅游发展的过程、格局和机制的系统研究，开展都市圈旅游产业发展、都市圈旅游发展的文化创新、重大工程和重大节事的都市圈旅游发展效应、都市圈旅游发展竞争与合作、都市圈旅游发展的生态过程与资源环境效应及其优化调控等特色专题研究，探求都市圈旅游发展的国际典型模式和中国特色道路，建立中国都市圈旅游发展的研究体系。项目力求推动旅游地理学研究进入全新阶段，创新旅游地理学、经济地理学和城市地理学的研究思路，拓展研究领域，提升学科水平。

The metropolitan area is an important spatial form of the human activities and the basic platform for national development. Since the new century, promoting metropolitan development has become a national strategy for regional development in China. New opportunities and elements provided by the development of the metropolitan area are making the metropolitan tourism a new developing model. Developing metropolitan tourism is the main road for cultivating tourism as a strategic mainstay industry in national economy and an important content for transforming the mode of economic development..Metropolitan tourism has become the forefront field of Human Geography. In the existing researches at home and abroad, many involving the concept of tourism resources, a new paradigm of research should be further explored. More research about traditional tourism elements, research on new elements should be strengthened. Besides, there is so many about the monomer city research that we should give much more attention to metropolitan organisms..Regarding these issues, this project intends to take Jingjinji Zone, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta as the main empirical objects, and make comprehensive use of theories and methods such as geography, economics, urban planning, management, sociology, ecology, tourism science and so on. We will focus on such systematic studies of metropolitan tourism as the international typical developing mode, the developing process, pattern, mechanism, and the developing road of Chinese characteristics. We will also pay critical attention to those characteristic monographic studies, for example, development of metropolitan tourism industry, cultural innovation of metropolitan tourism, metropolitan tourism development effects on major projects and important events, competition and collaboration of metropolitan tourism development, and the ecological process and environment effect of metropolitan tourism..This project will establish a research system of Chinese metropolitan tourism development through multidisciplinary integrated research, and reveal the developing features and rule of Chinese metropolitan tourism based on the innovative concept of tourism development. We should also keep a foothold on global vision and local perspective to explore a characteristic developing road for Chinese metropolitan tourism. The project seeks to promote tourism geography research into a new phase, innovate the research idea of tourism geography, economic geography and urban geography, and broaden the research horizons and fields, thus improving the level of discipline development.