An Analysis of the Optimal Facility Location of Tourism Industry in Plain Region by Utilizing GIS

Abstract

In this study, we utilize regional public facilities as the factors of evaluation criteria, apply buffering and weighted overlay analysis in GIS as the multi-criteria spatial information analysis tools, and take the Lanyang Plain, Yilan, Taiwan as the test area for the optimal facility location analysis of tourism industry. We take the “optimal service/influence distance” of each regional public facility from literature review as the radius of neighborhood for buffering and build the buffer objects in GIS. The process of weighted overlay analysis is conducted by using grid method. After a series of grid size testing, we find that while the grid size decreases to 320 m × 320 m, the distribution of grids with weighted overlay values is close to the distribution of all the buffer objects mentioned above. The distribution of grids with higher weighted overlap values obviously presents the optimal facility location of tourism industry that is apparently consistent with the distribution of the famous tour sites or facilities of tourism industry and the four to five star hotels. Therefore, we conclude that this optimal facility location model of tourism industry should be quite suitable for land use or site selection planning of tourism and relative industries.