1. Introduction
The Yellow River has always been the mother river of China, feeding hundreds of millions of people [
1]. Since the reform and opening up, the economy in the Yellow River Basin has been developed rapidly and has become an important economic belt in China, which arouses the governmental and the public attention on its sustainable development [
2,
3]. In 2021, the Chinese government issued the “Outline of the Yellow River Basin Ecological Protection and High-Quality Development Plan”, aimed to maintain the integrity of ecosystem in the Yellow River Basin, the rational resource allocation, and the relevance of cultural protection, inheritance, and promotion [
4,
5]. With the policies support of government, the protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin is bound to achieve good rationality of resource allocation in various industries [
6,
7]. As one of the three pillar industries of tourism, the hotel industry provides accommodation services for people. The development level of the hotel industry is one of the important factors in measuring the regional reception of the service industry [
8,
9]. In addition to providing accommodation and reception services, the hotel industry also plays a role in promoting local culture [
10,
11,
12]. At present, the hotel industry in the Yellow River Basin is characterized by large quantity and scale, a wide range of service objects, and multiple hotel types. The increase of residents’ income raises the demand for better tourism experience and promotes a shift of the regional service industries from the expansion in scale and quantity to the improvement of quality [
13]. However, the lack of reasonable planning and guidance for future development also leads to the situation of disordered development. Especially in the period of corona-virus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the hotel industry suffered a huge negative impact [
14,
15,
16]. In this situation, there are many challenges to achieve the sustainable development of the hotel industry [
17].
With the implementation of ecological protection and high-quality development strategies in the Yellow River Basin, the construction projects of national cultural parks were implemented, and various prefecture-level cities promoted the development of the industry through the implementation of supply-side reform policies [
18,
19,
20]. With the support of various policies, more than 2.3 billion trips were made in the Yellow River Basin in 2022. Based on the consolidation of tourism development, tourism industry development planning is becoming more and more important, which puts forward higher requirements for the hotel industry. The service objects of the hotel industry are mainly tourists and businessmen, and the demand for service level is the main reason for accelerating the differentiation of hotel types [
21,
22,
23]. The degree of hotel agglomeration is different among different cities. In particular, the development degree of high-end hotel industry is one of the manifestations of the level of urban modernization [
24,
25,
26]. Therefore, the location characteristics of the hotel industry can be further revealed by studying the overall spatial evolution of different types of hotels and their correlations.
In terms of the research areas, scholars mostly studied the spatial distribution characteristics of the hotel industry from the national, provincial, city, and county scales [
27,
28,
29,
30,
31,
32,
33,
34,
35]. However, with the increasing importance of the protection and development of water system basins, there are more and more demands of the study on a complete single water system basin as the research area. Some scholars mostly took the hotel industry as a whole or one or two types of star-rated hotels and chain hotels as research objects [
36,
37,
38,
39], which needed the spatial heterogeneity of different hotels in-depth. In terms of research methods, scholars mostly used a single method for research [
27,
28,
40], where the use of comprehensive methods was more effective to reveal the spatial-temporal evolution. As for the influencing factors, scholars conducted a large number of researches on selected factors such as tourism demands [
4,
29,
41], consumer market [
42,
43], regional economic conditions [
16,
44,
45], infrastructure conditions [
46,
47,
48], tourism resource endowment [
49,
50,
51], environmental quality [
52,
53,
54], and government investment [
55,
56,
57]. However, at present, there is a lack of systematic screening of many data. Thus, it is possible to systematically explore the factors about the distribution of the hotel industry based on multiple sources of public data and to adopt multiple measurement methods.
Based on existing information, it is found that governments around the world increasingly attach importance to the river basins [
58,
59,
60,
61]. In China, the government will make a serious of development planning for the hotel industry in the Yellow River Basin. There are several urgent questions to be addressed, such as the following: What are the overall development and changes in the spatial layout of the hotel industry in the Yellow River Basin over the past 11 years? Furthermore, what are the factors that affect the macro level layout of the hotel industry? Therefore, this paper took prefecture-level cities in the Yellow River Basin as the basic research unit. Based on the POI data of all categories of hotel industry from 2012 to 2022, the hotel industry was divided into star hotels and ordinary hotels (non-star hotels). Based on the vector data, the spatial analysis function of GIS software was used to systematically explore the spatial temporal pattern of hotel industry, star hotels, general hotels, and spatial autocorrelation agglomeration situation. Based on the official data, SPSS24.0 software and excel software were used to carry out data analysis by Geographical detector and Pearson correlation analysis. The experimental results fully verified the driving effects and systematically revealed modes of the influencing factors.
The combination of spatial analysis and measurement methods in this study can enrich the research methods and technical routes for the spatial structure relationship of the hotel industry in the river basin, and also contributed to enriching the spatial layout theory of the service industry and the tourism spatial structure theory. Secondly, this study can help the government understand the characteristics of hotel location better by revealing the evolution characteristics and influencing factors of hotel location at the macro level, which could mainly provide an important scientific reference for the government in formulating industry development planning. Finally, it provides a unique reference path for planners when carrying out planning work in local areas.
6. Discussion
As the pillar industry of China’s tertiary industry, the hotel industry is an important reception service industry. The spatial-temporal evolution patterns of the hotel industry in the Yellow River basin show that there are great differences in the development of the scale of the hotel industry in different cities. The research results enrich the research methods and technical routes of the structural relationship of the hotel industry in large regions. For the government, it can provide a scientific reference for the formulation of the spatial development planning of the hotel industry and also provide a reference for the spatial planning and layout of the hotel industry in other regions. It is helpful to enrich the spatial layout theory of service industry and the spatial structure theory of tourism. Combined with the quantitative analysis results, the seven factors identified were analyzed.
Structural force factors. The hotel industry is composed of various types of hotels, and it cooperatively develops and improves the urban service industry chain. In order to meet the needs of different consumer groups, the hotel industry has developed a variety of service products, thus gradually forming different types of hotels [
62].
Macro factors. The relatively high GDP level of the city indicates that the industrial development environment is good, and business activities are frequent. Foreign businessmen provide a stable consumer group for the development of the hotel industry. Fixed asset investment can improve the production and service capacity of the city and provide basic means of production for the development of the hotel industry. Tourism revenue is an important source of regional economic growth [
63]. Affected directly by the number of inbound tourists, the increasing in the number of tourists forces the scale of the hotel industry to continue to expanding.
Ecological factors. The hotel industry is an important supporting industry for the construction of national scenic spots, which are also the most popular tourist destinations. The number of national scenic spots owned by the region represents the main competitiveness of the regional tourism industry, and is the key factor to attract tourists, thus driving the development of the hotel industry. The annual average concentration of PM 2.5 reflects the urban ecological environment and is an important consideration factor for attracting foreign people to live or travel temporarily.
Internal dynamic factors. Population is the main service body of the hotel industry. The increase of population density provides the possibility for the hotel industry to expand market space and create market opportunities. The higher the urban population density, the greater the market demand capacity of the hotel industry. GDP per capita reflects the purchasing power of regional residents, which can effectively build the supply-demand relationship of “consumer-hotel industry” and is the internal driving force for the development of regional hotel industry.
Consumption power factor. The proportion of the gross output value of the tertiary industry represents the overall scale expansion of the regional service industry. The reception provided by the hotel industry is the key link for various entities to carry out official business, business, tourism, and other service activities. The retail sales of social consumer goods reflect the material input of local residents in their daily life, as well as the cost of some companies, enterprises and social organizations to hold commercial and social activities. The larger the total amount, the faster the circulation of goods in the region, and the market demand for high-quality reception services.
Intermediary factors. The passenger traffic volume and road density respectively reflect the regional traffic capacity and the improvement level of road facilities. This provides convenient transportation for people to go out and carry out life and entertainment activities, and also provides intermediary conditions for consumers to go to hotels.
External power factor. The cross-regional tourism consumption of tourists involves clothing, food, accommodation and transportation. The accommodation services provided by the hotel industry can meet the short-term accommodation needs of foreign tourists [
64], which is also an important reason why the development of the hotel industry in various cities is driven by tourism. The amount of foreign capital actually utilized can reflect the regional investment environment, as a catalyst for regional economic development, accelerate economic growth and promote the development of the hotel industry.
In order to solve the research problems of the space structure of hotels at the prefecture-level cities, promote the coordinated development of the hotel industry in the Yellow River Basin in practice, and achieve the ultimate goal of high-quality and sustainable development of the industry, the following suggestions are put forward, through exploring the space-time evolution characteristics and influencing factors of the hotel industry from the perspective of the space of prefecture-level cities:
Under the governmental leadership, industries can optimize the allocation of resources in the accommodation industry in combination with major regional development strategies and undertake the upper planning. The development of the accommodation industry reflects the image and function of the city. It should be closely combined with the ecological protection and high-quality development strategy of the Yellow River basin, the construction project of the Yellow River Cultural Park, and the regional tourism development plan. It should integrate the scale, quantity, service quality, spatial layout, and urban functions, and actively integrate into the “one blueprint” of the land and space planning, and make reasonable planning, make all types of hotels in the accommodation industry develop harmoniously within the regional space.
Under the governmental leadership, the number of different types of hotels should be reasonably allocated, the product menu should be optimized for consumers, the needs of different consumer groups should be met, and the reception services such as tourism, business and trade should be carried out well to avoid homogeneous competition. The spatial layout of the future planning and construction of the accommodation industry in the Yellow River basin should adhere to the principle of “market-oriented and people-oriented” in terms of location selection, capital investment, land use index division, infrastructure and supporting facilities construction, fully consider market demand, standardize market prices, improve service levels, and avoid resource waste caused by homogeneous competition within the region.
7. Conclusions
Based on the POI data of the hotel industry in the Yellow River Basin from 2012 to 2022 and the panel data of prefecture-level cities, this paper took 84 cities as the basic research unit, by using GIS software, SPSS24.0 software and Excel software, and computer visualization technology, geographic detector and Pearson correlation analysis method to systematically explore the spatial-temporal distribution pattern and spatial auto-correlation concentration trend of the hotel industry, star hotels and ordinary hotels. The study also revealed the driving force and action mode of the influencing factors. The conclusions are as follows:
The scale of the hotel industry in the Yellow River Basin is undergoing continuous and dynamic changes, and there are significant differences in the comparison between the upstream, midstream, and downstream areas. From 2012 to 2022, the scale of the hotel industry in various cities in the Yellow River Basin expanded year by year, and the total number achieved rapid growth since 2016. The number and scale of hotels in prefecture-level cities were characterized by “more in the southeast and less in the northwest” in spatial distribution. The lower reaches of the Yellow River basin were mainly high value clusters of various types of hotels, the upper reach had mainly low clustering, and the middle reach were gradually becoming the clusters of central value regions. The uneven gap was gradually widening in the process of space-time evolution. However, there were differences in the number of different types of hotels. The space-time evolution characteristics of ordinary hotels were similar to those of the hotel industry, but the number of star hotels showed a trend of first increasing and then decreasing, and the numerical gap between prefecture-level cities is narrowing.
The agglomeration degree of hotel industry and ordinary hotels among prefecture-level cities in the Yellow River Basin decreased year by year, and presented a random distribution in 2022, while the spatial agglomeration degree of star hotels always was a weak random distribution. During the dynamic development of the hotel industry, there were continuous hot spots and cold spots. The hot spots were mainly distributed in some prefecture-level cities with good social and economic development in Shandong Province, Henan Province and Sichuan Province, while the cold spots were mainly located in parts of Qinghai Province and Gansu Province in the west. In addition, the number of ordinary hotels and the number of star-rated hotels had a strong synergy in the local space.
The total number of hotels, the number of ordinary hotels, and the number of star-rated hotels in cities across the Yellow River basin were positively driven by various factors and the degree of influence is different. On the whole, the development of the hotel industry was significantly affected by seven factors (structural force, macro force, ecological force, internal force, consumption force, intermediary force, and external force), and the forces acting on different types of hotels are different. These factors should be taken into account when chain hotels exist.
However, due to the availability of data and other reasons, this paper did not explore the impact of natural conditions such as terrain, vegetation, or light on the development of the hotel industry in the Yellow River basin, nor did it compare and analyze the turnover of different types of hotels. But while there are still deficiencies in the research process, but this also points out the way for future research. The research team is looking forward to conducting more in-depth cooperation with more government departments, further enriching the theoretical system, revealing the spatial-temporal evolution patterns and influence mechanism of the hotel industry at more scales, so as to build a comprehensive model suitable for national, provincial, municipal, and other multi-scale research.