According to Baumgarten [1], tourism is now considered to be the largest industry in the world. He illustrates that the World Travel and Council in 2010, the tourism and travel industry will be a 6 trillion dollar a year industry employing approximately 250 million people. Therefore, tourism is becoming increasingly important. Tourism is a way combining elements like air travel, hotel stay, restaurant dinning, museum visits, and other cultural activities all in one package. Urban places have become increasingly valued as places of consumption, requiring an emphasis on the physical and cultural aesthetic and qualities of urban landscape.

At a global scale, almost 46 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas and by the year 2030 this is set to rise to 61 percent. It is a growing significance of urban places and their space for the consumption of tourism and leisure experience. According to Law [9], “large cities are arguably the most important type of tourist destination across the world”. Urban tourism is a fascinating phenomenon, the emergence of urban tourism through a process when tourism was seen as a danger in 1970 is described by Ashworth [2] as a defensive approach to tourism in the city.

Furthermore, Ashworth [3] identified three approaches ways to view urban tourism. Firstly, the supply of tourism facilities in urban areas in terms of categorization and inventories of facilities by geographers, has led to research on the distribution of hotels, restaurants, attractions, shopping, nightlife and other tourist related services. Secondly, the demand for urban tourism, where research has largely been descriptive to establish who visits urban tourist destinations, why they visit, the patterns and behavior of tourist activities, and the ways in which such destinations are perceived by visitors. Thirdly, policy perspective on urban tourism generated by planners and the private sector, are not widely disseminated and restricted to those organizations who generate the studies or who have a vested interest in the tourism sector.

On the other hand, Buternshaw et al. [4] identified a number of overlapping functional areas in the tourist city:

• The ‘historic city’ (historic monuments, museums, art galleries, theaters, concert halls).
• The ‘culture city’ (museums, art galleries, theatres, concert halls).
• The ‘night life city’ (theatres, concert halls, nightclubs, entertainment, cafes, restaurant).
• The ‘shopping city’ (café, restaurant, shops, offices).

In urban tourism, tourist accommodation performs an important function in cities; it provides the opportunities for visitors to stay for a length of time to enjoy the locality and its attractions, while their spending can contribute to the local economy. Accommodation also forms a base for the tourist’s exploration of urban environment. Accommodation is not only a major element of the urban tourism economy, but forms a basis for associated activities such as conferences and conventions. The demand and supply of visitors’ accommodation, leisure facilities, and tourism related infrastructure have been identified as key topics for consideration.

According to Wöber [5], ‘research in tourism is usually based on accommodation statistics, results from sample surveys of guest, accommodation providers or other experts, or estimates achieved by grossing up procedures using other statistical sources.’ Even elementary tourism data like nights, arrivals, number of beds, number of accommodation establishments, occupancy rates or length of stay may vary significantly between cities.

1.1 Urban Tourism in New York, United States

Location Background

United States is known to many as the home of a wonderful cuisine, great package tours, child prostitution, fabulous silk, fake Rolex watches and magnificent temples. New York is the financial and cultural center of Unites States. It is located on the bank spiritual, education and diplomatic a Centre of the county. According to United States Census Bureau [6], it is at least ten times as large as the next largest city in United States. The population of New York is estimated at around 7-8 million.

New York provides the first taste of United States for most international visitors and it is quite a remarkable introduction to United States, and New York also has been considered as “the essence” of United States. New York can be described as one perplexing traffic jam with buildings in between the buses, cars, trucks and other vehicles. On the other hand, New York has its charms and despite the pollution, chaotic traffic, and other problems.

Many tourists find they like the city. It is a rather vibrant city, with remarkable temples and other important tourist sites, excellent food, various entertainments, endless night life and best spa. However, international tourists who come to New York for a day or two, to see the main tourist attractions: the Statue of Liberty, Central Garden, Empire State Building rides on the Hudson River and similar kinds of sight and then move off to the north, on cultural tours or to the south, where are beautiful lakes and for some, the classical trio: Sea, Sand and Sound.

Chinatown is a section of an urban area with a large number of Chinese outside the majority-Chinese countries of Greater China. New York's Chinatown is located on Canal Street and Mott Street Road, and it is in one of the oldest areas of New York. According to Burrows and Wallace [7], Canal Street and Mott Street Road Chinatown in the New York has a long history starting from 1820s. Canal Street and Mott Street Road in New York's Chinatown is one of the most colorful, noisy and liveliest districts in New York and known for its closeness to New York's most famous temples and tourist attractions also offer great shopping and an exotic variety of the finest Chinese cuisine.

Moreover, on Canal Street and Mott Street Road, Chinatown, is also famous for many varieties of delicious foods and food streets in the night as well as a bustling Chinese jewellery trade [8]. For the tourists, Chinatown is chiefly exotic for its markets, shop house, open-fronted warehouses and remnants of colonial–style architecture. Therefore, some tourists prefer to stay in Chinatown, despite the limited choice of hotels. Chinatown represents a true taste of one of the most bustling, fascinating and historic areas in town and ease of access to nearby tourist favorites. Chinatown district provides a good choice of accommodation. There are a handful of hotels and guesthouse here but it remains very much an alternative location against the better established accommodation centres.

The Chinatown accommodation in New York is ideally situated in one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods, in the ethnic Chinese quarter. It features some excellent shopping, dining and business opportunities in its vicinity, as well as quick access to the rest of the city throughout the highway, riverboat and subway networks. Moreover, tourists can also enjoy cheap, comfortable accommodation in New York’s Chinese quarters. In Chinatown district, there are limited choices of star hotels; if tourists prefer affordable hotels, they can choose between two to four-star hotels. I will be discounting the five-star hotels here as my focus is only readily accessible affordable hotels.

Besides, there are a lot of budget accommodation readily available in Chinatown area. Generally, the accommodation rate in Chinatown is relatively affordable starting at US $51 - $100 for two-star hotels, US $101-$150 for three-star hotels and US$151-250 for four-star hotels, as well as under $50 and below for guest house and budget hotels.

1.3 Objectives of the Study:

At a general level, the research is directed towards how different groups of tourists feel towards the accommodation choices in New York Chinatown. The research will also explore the possibility of the improvement for the Chinese accommodation in New York. Specifically, the objectives of the study are as follows:

• To identify with the various viewpoints of different groups of tourists regarding the New York Chinatown accommodation. Generally, the study considers two groups of tourists, namely the ‘insiders’, or tourists who come from domestic United States, and the ‘outsiders’, or tourists who arrive from overseas.
• To find out what are the main attractions for tourists to choose stay in Chinatown district.

In order to understand people’s views on accommodation in Chinatown of New York and to find out the main attractions of accommodation in Chinatown area, the quantitative method was used based on descriptive analysis using continuous or discrete tables. Survey questionnaires were conducted with two groups of people, namely the “insiders” and the “outsiders”. “Insiders” include people who are living in domestic New York. “Outsiders” refer to people who arrive from overseas.

There are two sections to the survey. The first section required the interviewers to ask respondents about tourist’s demographic and behavioral characteristics. This included questions such as gender, age groups, nationalities, travel party size, income level, the past experience and the purpose of this trip. The second section of the survey asked respondents about accommodation in Chinatown district, such as the type of accommodation, rankings of the hotel, reasons to choose this hotel, length of stay, price of accommodation, ratings of each aspect of accommodation and the general impression of Chinatown district.

The questionnaires were designed to meet the specific aims of the research. The questionnaire format included a mixture of multiple-choice questions to obtain quantitative data. The survey was conducted in two days in Chinatown of New York, United States. Distribution of questionnaires was carried out during the daytime between 10 AM to 5 PM. All respondents have been informed about the purpose of this survey before they answered all the questions.

Data were collected at every different accommodation in Chinatown area including budget hotels, two-star hotels, three-star hotels, four-star hotels and some guest houses and B&B lodging. The research respondents were the day visitors and all staying visitors. A total of 40 tourists were surveyed in the research area which included 20 “outsiders” and 20 “insiders”. The respondents were randomly chosen to ensure a fair representation of the population.

Research Hypothesis

Hypotheses are assumed in this study to determine the relevance of the data relations between the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. In this case, I will use the Kruskal-Wallis test to posit the following hypotheses below:

(The null hypothesis (H0) is that the population medians are equal)

Null Hypothesis: H₀: There is no difference in the type of accommodation stayed based on gender.

(The alternative hypothesis (H1) is that the population medians are not equal)

Alternative Hypothesis: H_a: There is a difference in the type of accommodation stayed based on gender.

Some of the results here are prescribed using descriptive analysis. It is useful when there is a need to provide discrete or continuous data. Bar charts are provided which allows for depiction of graphs accompanying statistic figures compiled from the respondents. The Kruskal-Wallis test will also be conducted because it allows for the use of continuous variable such as age, distance, speed or discrete variable that can be counted based on size, number, cost as supposited by Kruskal & Wallis [10]. It is useful to use this method to test hypotheses when then normality does not hold.

Visitation Characteristics

Table 1: The gender distribution of the respondents being quite different.

The Table. A shows the gender distribution of the respondents being quite different, with 70% male respondents and 30.0% female respondents. The dominant age group of respondents was majority on 26-35years (37.5%), followed by 36 to 45 years (22.5%). Most of the respondents (85%) reported that they are overseas visitors, and 15% of the respondents came from domestic United States visiting New York.

The majority of respondents (67.5%) came with an organized group to New York. With regards to respondents’ annual household income, the largest group entailed those with an annual household income of under US$ $ 20,000 (72.5), and only 5% of the respondents had an annual household income of more than US$60,000. In the category of the number of previous visits to New York, 70% of the respondents did not have previous experience in this area. Almost 25% of the respondents visited two to five times.

Table 2: Chinatown districts.

Figure 1: A significant proportion of respondents (62.5%) stayed in Chinatown’s hotels.

A significant proportion of respondents (62.5%) stayed in Chinatown’s hotels, and 30% of stayed in Guest houses and B&B lodgings in Chinatown area, whereas 7.5% of the respondents were stayed in home of friends or relatives and other places in Chinatown.

Figure2: Hotel Accommodation.

The above bar chart in Fig.1 indicated the type of hotel standards that respondents stayed in. The majority of respondents (37.5%) stayed in zero-star hotels, such as budget hotels, which was followed by two-star hotels (25%) and three-star hotels (20%), whereas (17.5%) of the respondents stayed in four-star hotels. Therefore, the results showed most respondents preferred to choose relatively low-standard accommodation in Chinatown district.

Table 3: Accommodation in Chinatown district.

Figure3: The most common length of stay in Chinatown.

In Table. C, the most common length of stay in Chinatown was 1 night (52.5%), and followed by 2-3 nights (25%). A further 17.5% of respondents stayed 4-7 nights, and 5% stayed for more than 7 nights.

Table 4: Main attraction stay in Chinatown District.

Figure 4: Frequency.

In Table. D, the majority of visitors (50%) stayed in Chinatown for entertainment and leisure purposes. 17.5% of visitors stayed for the reasons of reasonable room rates as compared with the accommodations in the heart of New York, 15% respondents stayed in Chinatown due to the convenient location, and 10% of respondents stayed in Chinatown to enjoy the Chinese culture and heritage, and the remaining 7.5 % for other reasons.

Table 5: Visitors Accommodation Expenditure.

Figure 5: Accommodation Frequency.

The above Table. E shows the expenditure on accommodation expected of respondents staying in Chinatown. 57.5% of respondents spent between $ US 50 to US$ 100 per night on accommodation. 20% of respondents spent below US$ 50 per night on accommodation, and 17.5% spent between US$ 100 to US$ 150, and only 5% of respondents spent more than more than US$150 on accommodation in Chinatown.

Table 6: Levels of Respondents’ Satisfaction with Accommodation.

Figure 6: Cleanliness and quality of service.

In the Table. F, respondents expressed a middle level of satisfaction with their accommodation in Chinatown district. Cleanliness and quality of service were rated “Average”, and value for money and availability were rated ‘Fairly good”.

Table 7: Impressions of Tourism Accommodation in Chinatown district.

Figure 7: Chinatown’s respondents’ accommodation.

The above Table G. illustrates the impression of the Chinatown’s respondents’ accommodation. This provides an insight into the possible reaction of respondents to any further accommodation development in the Chinatown district. Respondents tended to disagree that there was enough high-level hotel accommodation in Chinatown. However, they agreed that there were enough mid-range and budget hotels in Chinatown, and they were less sure if there were enough guest or B&B accommodations in Chinatown.

Kruskal-Wallis Test

Kruskal-Wallis test will also be conducted because it allows for the use of continuous variable such as age, distance, speed or discrete variable that can be counted based on size, number, cost. It is analogous to the one-way analysis of variance. It does not assume any particular distribution of the data. The study is conducted by using a survey of 40 respondent who reported spending more than 8 hours in the accommodation, or between 6–8 hours, or less than 6 hours in the accommodation on average. They then determined their gender using a validated score. Table. H below shows the raw gender scores collected across the stay within the accommodation categories along with the median gender score in each category.

Table 8: Hours of stay against gender scores.

This is a discrete outcome variable within three independent groups, a small sample size and so I cannot assume a normal distribution. Thus, I will determine if there is a difference in gender scores across number of hours stayed in the accommodation. I have to sort the data into groups based on the assigned ranks to the gender scores shown in Table. I below.

Table 9: Assigned ranks to the gender scores.

I can now add together the ranks for each group. I will call the groups as T_j.

• T_a (rank total for the <6 hours sleep group): 1 + 3 + 5 + 11 + 13 = 33
• T_b (rank total for the 6-8 hours’ sleep group): 2 + 7 + 8 + 13 + 14 = 44
• T_c (rank total for the >8 hours sleep group): 4 + 6 + 9 + 10 + 15 = 44

Here I can use the below formula to test my hypothesis by using the H alphabet.

N= number of respondents

T_j is the rank total for each group, i.e

(T_a = 33; T_b=44; T_c=44)

n_j is the number of trials for each group

(n_a = 33; n_b=44; n_c=44)

Now I can formulate this whole testing scenario.

33₂ + 44₂ + 44₂

5 + 5 + 5

=217.8 + 387.2 + 387.2

=992.2

 12          x (992.2) – 3 x (15+1)

 15(15+1)

= 49.61 – 48

H = 1.61

The test statistic is H=1.61.

The final step is to compare the H value with a critical chi-square value and interpret the p-value obtained. This value is derived from the chi-squared distribution, which is a theoretical distribution of values for a population. In my example, with a 2df and a 0.05 significance level, we obtain a p-value of >0.05 given that our calculated H statistic is much smaller than the critical value of 5.991 (the exact p-value calculated using statistical software is p=0.652).

This means the likelihood of obtaining a large value of H is 0.652. This is a large p-value, and so we conclude that there is insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis that there are no differences in gender scores across the three groups that stayed in the accommodation.

The following is a summary of this urban tourism study in New York’s Chinatown accommodation. For this study, the key respondents were male generally more than female, and aged between 18 to 45 years of age. The majority of respondents joined an organized tour group to visit New York, and most of the respondents were foreigners. 70% of the respondents claimed it was the first time to New York. For most respondents, their annual personal income was below $ 20,000.

The survey result showed that both insiders and outsiders felt relatively positive about accommodations in Chinatown in general. Despite this slight negativity about the conditions of cleanliness and quality of service with Chinatown’s accommodations, a majority of respondents surveyed agreed that they stayed in Chinatown due to a variety of entertainment and outdoor activities (50%).

That would include lots of delicious food, cheap shopping and fantastic night-life in Chinatown at night, and other reasons were followed by the reasonable room rates (17.5%), and the convenient location (15%), whereas 17.5% of the respondents stayed in Chinatown due to the Chinese cultural attractions and other reasons. The majority of respondents stayed overnight (52.5%), followed by 42.5% of the respondents that stayed in Chinatown under 7 days, and 5% of the respondents that stayed more than a week.

According to this survey, almost all of the respondents would like to stay in hotel accommodation (62.5%) in Chinatown district, but most of visitors stayed in budget hotels. Furthermore, there were 30% of respondents that stayed in Guest house/ B&B accommodations, and the majority of the respondents (57.5%) spent between $ US 50 to US$ 100 for accommodation in Chinatown.

Therefore, it shows that most of the respondents preferred to stay in the mid-range accommodation in Chinatown. In addition, most respondents felt that there was a lack of high-quality accommodation in Chinatown, even though there were enough mid-range budget hotels and guest house/ B&B accommodations in Chinatown.

The research suggests that in Chinatown, there appears to be a lack of high-quality accommodation that business visitors may more likely prefer and use. In addition, business guests may have problems finding the range of five-star hotels that could be detrimental to their experience. Furthermore, the cleanliness and quality of service of some Chinatown’s accommodations need to improve, such as cleanliness and service of quality. When a guest arrives at any accommodation, one of the first thing they are likely to do is form an opinion about the standards of cleanliness, and the quality of services in accommodation also plays an important role in the guest’s level of satisfaction.

• In order to ensure the competitiveness of Chinatown’s accommodation and improve its recognition in the demanding market, it is important to deal with the problems and weaknesses of the past and present. Below are some recommendations for Chinatown’s accommodation towards the future:
• Fill the gaps and deficiencies in the visitors’ accommodation sector (Insufficient supply of high-quality accommodation in Chinatown). Built some high-quality accommodation to attract more business visitors.
• Take advantage of the rich history, cultural heritage and to bring more visitors to stay in Chinatown.
• Manage the accommodation and provide the training programmes to all staff.
• Create effective communication messages (photographs, slogan, etc.) within the accommodation and to encourage visitors to repeat-visit.
• Handle any changes in visitor’s preferences and demand trends.
• Understand that any further development is sensitive to the character of Chinatown

Chinatown in New York is attractive to visitors because of its historical attractions, location, food, shopping and reasonable room rates that attract tourists, particularly from overseas. In particular, New York’s Chinatown has a 200-year history. It is important to note that any under-development may also detract from the visitor’s experience. To ensure the development of accommodation, it is vital to be sensitive to the immediate environment and the overall “character” of the city. For this study, most respondents felt that the most productive way of addressing local issues and working to improve a number of the concerns include the standard of cleanliness, and the quantity of quality accommodations.

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