Spatial Patterns of Tourist Attractions in the Yangtze River Delta Region
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript analyzed spatial patterns of tourist attractions in the Yangtze River Delta with various classical spatial analysis methods including average nearest neighbor analysis, hot spot analysis, etc. However, in my opinion, there are two main problems in the manuscript:
First, the innovation of the manuscript seems not so sufficient. In Line 68, it may be not appropriate to say that because few studied the spatial patterns of the tourist attractions in the Yangtze River Delta so we do this research. Almost every study is conducted to address some specific problem. You can depict the current problems of the tourist attractions in the Yangtze River and to solve them you start the study.
Second, the manuscript used various methods and analyzed the result for each method. It seems too plain and it did not concentrate on one or two methods or show connections among them. Also, we can go further to use these results to guide the optimization of the spatial patterns of the tourist attractions (for instance), rather than just plainly depict these analysis results.
Other minor issues that need to be rectified:
1. The dotted symbols for different types of attractions are a bit hard to distinguish (in Figure 1, Figure 5 to 8). Please optimize these figures.
2. Some typos need to be corrected. For instance, in Line 221, the first word “This” of the sentence appears after a sentence that ends with a comma. Please check the whole manuscript to make sure no language mistakes.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Using point-of-interest data of tourist attractions in the Yangtze River Delta, this papaer analyzes the spatial distribution pattern of tourist attractions and its influencing factors by applying multiple methods of spatial analysis.
Problems of this paper are listed as follows:
1. What is the scientific problem that the paper is really trying to solve or can solve? There is usually only one. The research questions raised by the author in the introduction need to be further refined.
2. The availability of POI data needs further explanation, and it is suggested to compare it with the list of tourist attractions issued by authorities.
3. How is the data classification of POI attractions carried out? Is there a tourist attraction that can be divided into more than one category? How many of these tourist attractions are covered in the paper? How does the author handle this?
4. The grade difference of tourist attractions has a great impact on the study of this paper, which is recommended for the author to consider.
5. In Section 3 of the paper, four methods are used to discuss tourist attractions after classification. What are the reasons for the classified discussion and what are the differences or advantages compared with other studies?
6. The shapes of the standard deviation ellipse are very similar to the shape of the study area. Is it because the data is distributed evenly in the whole study area without obvious directionality? If the authors think there is directionality, please explain the influencing factors or reasons for this directionality.
7. Please verify the range of elevation value in Figure 5. The color grades of elevation in Figure 5 is suggested to be adjusted.
8. What is the lowest grade of the river grade used in Figure 6, and why?
9. The analysis of the influencing factors of the spatial pattern of tourist attractions is not in-depth, and the results or conclusions are basically common sense.
10. There have been some studies on the spatial pattern of tourist attractions, but this paper does not fully grasp it. Literature review needs to focus on the spatial pattern of tourist attractions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
This sounds to be a good research, but still needs major improvements.
Please follow the next steps in order to improve it:
In the Introduction cite other authors that did a similar work.
The study area section should be expanded.
The hot spot analysis should be expanded, the method is not scientifically described. Also, cite other authors that used this method.
The Literature Review section is missing, please add it.
The figure 1 should be better expressed, the same for the others (display them in a more readable format).
There are some repetition in the text (e.g. the connection and connection of the...),please check carefully the full text.
Findings should be an other section and not in the Conclusion. Also, in the Conclusion section the results should be compared with other previous research studies.
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript is clear and presented in a well-structured manner with cited mostly recent publications. It sounds scientifically although the tourist attractions issue is rather old one.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
After the first round of revision, the authors have revised or explained all issues point-to-point. I believe this manuscript meets the criteria for acceptance of the journal and agree to accept in present form.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have made extensive revisions to the paper, but the following problems remain:
1. The understanding of scientific issues is not in place, and the revision of problem 1 is not in place.
2. The revision of question 2 fails to grasp the core of the problem. Please remove the code.
3. The reviewer cannot agree with the reply to question 4.
4. The response to question 5 misses the point.
5. The reviewer was not satisfied with the reply to question 6.
6. What does High:255 mean in the legend of Fig.5? Is the highest elevation of the entire study area is 255 meters?
7. Question 10 still needs to be carefully revised and perfected.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
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Reviewer 3 Report
The legend of the Figure 1, image 1 should be improved, it is not clearly displayed. The same for Figure 2, all the legends must be improved.
For the Figure 4, I think it is fine.
Figure 5, first image also.
Figure 6, both legends should be improved. Figure 7, first legend also and 8 the same.
Still, the Conclusion section should be expanded with comparing the obtained results with other similar ones more in-depth.
Good luck!
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
