Abstract: The spatial relationship between tour destination and visitor source region based on roads network is an important issue in tourism geography. Employing GIS spatial analysis, this paper analyzed the spatial pattern of tourism resources and population in Liaoning Province. Based on roads network, the tourism area around big city and the service area around tourism spot, as well as the relationship between tourism resources and population were investigated. The results showed that the golden triangle and west tourism line were the hot tourism area and hot line in Liaoning Province. The former consisted of 3 main cities and three lines linking other 9 cities, and the latter mainly consisted of Panjin City and Huludao City. The central city group containing 5 cities was the main region. Both the population and the tourism had the same distribution center. The service areas containing 9 scenic resorts accounted for 92.5% of the whole Liaoning Province. The scenic resorts varied from 10 000 km² to 70 000 km², and four of them could serve more than 10 000 000 people. The numbers of the cities, total population, and population of each city in the service areas had reached certain scale, and closely related to both the city location in the roads network and the relative location to other cities.

Key words: Ecotourism, Amount of tourist, Service-environment capacity, Eco-environment capacity, Five-finger Mountain eco-tourism resort