Abstract: The urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River promotes regional integration and builds a regional large-scale tourism consortium. This study identifies the spatial pattern of regional tourism development at present, evaluate the potential and trend of future tourism development, and construct a more optimized system of tourism development space in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Based on the multidimensional niche theory and the niche situation theory, the niche index system of regional tourism ecology, which can calculate the niche, the state and the potential, is constructed respectively. According to the niche situation model algorithm and the GIS platform, a map of regional ecological niche, potential, and comprehensive niche of tourism was drawn. The result shows:①Ecological niche, potential, and ecological niche of the highest and secondary ecological niche are all concentrated in Wuhan and Changsha regions.②Compared with the map of “state”, the map of tourism niche potential is more fragmented, reflecting the relatively complex development trend of regional tourism.③The general ecological niche of tourism has formed a regional area with Nanchang and Jingdezhen as the core, and a stretching area composed of Yichang, Xiangyang, Jingzhou and Yueyang.④There is significant spatial positive correlation between the value of “state”, the “potential” and the comprehensive niche, but the types of spatial agglomeration are different. Finally, according to the comprehensive ecological niche measurement results, the tourism development space system of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River is established, which includes “one nucleus lead, two pole drive, three axis tandem, four district support”.
Key words：niche theory; tourism industry; spatial structure; gis; city cluster along Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River