“Invisible Cities”

China has been increasing its attractiveness as a tourist destination after implementing “Open Door” policies in 1978. Since the issue of air pollution in China has been increasingly attracting public attention in recent years, this dissertation has investigated the impact of poor air quality on international tourism demand of Chinese cities. First, literature reviews of evolution of international tourism industry demonstrated a great expansion, and status quo of air pollution reflected a lack of sustainable approach for this development. The case studies are also a part of method, in order to set up hypotheses for quantitative analysis of empirical study, which is air pollution in this research. Due to a scarce of scholars, three similar cases are selected because they share some common characteristics with air pollution. Based on the experiences learnt from the case studies, two main hypotheses are set up, which both air pollution and media publicity of air pollution will produce negative impacts on international tourism in Chinese cities. With the assists of econometrical models, two main hypotheses are tested. The statistical results manifested that the negative impacts on international tourism from air pollution and media publicity, indicating that hypotheses are not rejected. Tourism demand of international tourists will decline if the air quality decreases, as well as if media publicity of air pollution increases. As a consequence, it can be concluded that poor air quality has negatively influenced demand of international tourists in Chinese cities. Therefore, it calls for policy makers to seek for solutions of mitigating air pollution, in order to acquire a sustainable development of international tourism in Chinese cities.