Abstract:In the paper, we improve the assessment model for the sustainable development of regional tourism, which is based on the ecological footprint model. Four new components are proposed in the model, namely transferable ecological footprint, nontransferable ecological footprint, net ecological deficit and net ecological remainder. These improvements minish the assessment error of the sustainable development of the regional tourism, which is due to the trade factors. The nontransferable ecological footprint reflects the pressure of the environment influence in the tourism area, whereas the transferable ecological footprint has little effect on the sustainable development of the regional tourism. The nontransferable ecological footprint of tour destination consists of the resident nontransferable ecological footprint and the tourist nontransferable ecological footprint. In order to identify whether it is in a reasonable status, the scale of tourism development is diagnosed by checking the net ecological deficit and the net ecological remainder. ZhangJiaJie city is taken as the test case. The results show that in 2006 the nontransferable footprint of resident and that of tourist are respectively 1900500 hm2 and 221000 hm2, the ecological deficit and the net ecological remainder are respectively 944500 hm2 and 76200 hm2. These collectively suggest that the tourism development in ZhangJiaJie city is in a reasonable scale.