Tourism destinations: a network analysis of the Web space

Complex networks have been extensively studied in the last few years by an interdisciplinary community of researchers with the objective of explaining their structural characteristics, functions and dynamic evolution. This paper proposes an original quantitative approach to the study of tourism destinations. It aims at examining how network thinking can help in understanding the interactions between tourism stakeholders within a destination. Network analysis methods are used to compare two tourism destinations: the Fiji Islands and Elba, Italy. The major characteristics are measured, both from a static and a dynamic point of view. The results show that topological measurements can highlight the main structural features of the destination networks and of the underlying social and economic system and can provide a way to assess their evolutionary history.