Modern tourism is actually a departure from modern cities. The spread of so-called "urban diseases" caused by the rapid development of industrialized cities, such as environmental pollution, work pressure and physical and mental fatigue, has pushed people to flee the cities, look for rural areas, green fields, coasts, warm mineral springs and resorts, and pursue natural green, ancient monuments, brilliant sunshine, blue sea water and soft beaches. Therefore, the tourist destination left in people's minds will not be a modern city with high-rise buildings, cement and traffic. The tourism function of a city is relegated to the basic functions of industry, residence, commerce and transportation, and urban tourism is only valued and developed in some special cities, such as landscape cities, historical ancient capitals and cultural cities. Even in these tourist cities, tourists are only attracted by Guilin-style natural landscapes or Xi-style historical sites, not because of their urban attributes.
Since the 1990s, one of the most prominent changes in the tourism market is that, due to the diversification of tourism possibilities, natural landscapes and human landscapes in a broad sense, especially those in a single form, are less and less attractive to tourists, and this trend will become more and more obvious in the foreseeable future. In other words, even man-made scenic spots must be attractive and participatory, and must be exquisite and high-grade to have a tourist market.
All kinds of signs from the tourism market also show that more and more tourists are not only willing to choose more "unique", "strange" and "novel" tourist attractions, but also they are particularly optimistic about those tourist destinations and tourism projects with comprehensive characteristics (that is, strange and unique natural landscapes can be integrated with specific human landscapes), so as to obtain the integration of knowledge, entertainment, experience and enjoyment in a certain tourism process. The reasons for this change are closely related to the continuous development of various tourism resources, the rapid development of various mass media and the changes in people's leisure life. With the continuous development of tourism resources, tourists have more choices for tourism destinations and tourism projects, and the emergence of some new media has enabled many people to get a general understanding of many tourist attractions without leaving home.
In addition, due to the increase of holidays, especially the custom of worship, the development of expressways, the opening of tourist through trains, the convenience of telecommunication exchange, and the coincidence of urban suburban (suburban) tourism with urban peripheral tourism and short-term regional tourism, the regional scope of radiation tourism centered on the city has been greatly expanded, making the leisure tourism of all walks of life, especially groups, relatives, families, couples and bachelors, increase day by day. Leisure life is getting more and more attention, and the diversification of leisure ways makes many people more and more "picky" in the choice of tourism projects. The psychological satisfaction of "being proud of having been to famous mountains and rivers" in traditional tourism motivation has weakened, and now more and more people hope to seek real pleasure in the process of tourism. Although different levels and types of tourists, even tourists of different ages and sexes, will have certain differences in the above satisfaction orientation, but their needs for multiple satisfaction in the process of tourism are the same. In addition, the popularization of tourism behavior, the acceleration of urban life rhythm and the increase of people's average travel times are also important reasons why tourists expect more and more comprehensive tourism projects. In the process of implementing tourism behavior, people generally expect to get as much income as possible in unit time and certain economic expenditure.
Since the 20th century, under the background of booming domestic tourism demand and increasingly open and developed urban economy, ordinary small and medium-sized towns and complex and mature comprehensive cities have re-examined the sunrise industry and tried to bring it into the dynamic mechanism of urban economy. Among them, small and medium-sized cities such as Shenzhen and Pearl River Delta are represented, and cities that actively attract investment, conferences and exhibitions are represented by building artificial tourist attractions, while metropolises such as Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing are moving towards the development goal of regional international tourism centers. The tourism development of these cities is gradually approaching the tourism development model of other cities in the world, that is, they all begin to pursue the whole city instead of several independent scenic spots as a tourist attraction to the market. The core of urban tourism development is to establish a unique, distinctive and attractive tourism image, and rely on the image to attract tourists to travel. Since then, tourism image has become a new field of urban tourism development. Undoubtedly, it is difficult for a city without a distinctive tourism image to attract tourists for a long time. In short, the development of urban tourism needs to fully implement the tourism image strategy.