Comprehending regional characteristics and influencing factors of China’s inbound tourism economy is important to make effective policies that will help inbound tourism develop harmoniously and shrink regional disparity. The research studied the regional disparity and convergence of China’s inbound tourism economy during 1996–2008 with the methods of σ-convergence, club convergence and β-convergence. The results indicate that 1) inbound tourism receipts per capita (ITRPC) of the whole country, the eastern, central and western regions presented the rapid increasing trend; 2) ITRPC of the whole country was characterized by convergence; 3) the eastern region presented club convergence, but the central and western regions did not show this trend; 4) the star-hotel levels and investment in fixed assets for the tourism industry per capita had a same trend to growth rates of ITRPC, promoting inbound tourism development, and there was no difference among the 31 provinces (municipalities) in the mainland of China; 5) but the proportion of employed persons in the tourism industry accounting for total population and the proportion of the tertiary industry accounting for GDP had a reversal trend to growth rates of ITRPC, shrinking the provincial disparity in inbound tourism economy, and there were differences between the developed provinces and the developing provinces. Based on these analyses, we put forward some suggestions for the developing provinces to speed up inbound tourism economy.

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