Abstract
Tourism is basically a spatial phenomenon, which implies moving consumption within space. Starting from the assumption that the destinations are nodes of a network, we are able to reconstruct a spatial grid where each locality shows different grades and types of centrality. The analysis, focusing on the spatial dimension, shows clusters of locations. By shifting interest from single locations to destination networks, the study points out the structural features of each network. Employing traditional network analysis measures, we classify destinations considering the routes of a self-organized tourists sample that visited more than one destination in Sicily.
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Notes
- 1.
The survey is carried out as PRIN 2007–2009 “Socio-economic effects of behavior and motivations of real tourism in Sicily. Internal mobility and its economic effects” by University of Palermo, Catania, Sassari, Bologna. Selected data consist in face-to-face interviews submitted to tourists during their departures from most important Sicilian airports and ports.
- 2.
A complete graph is one in which all the points are adjacent to one another (Wasserman and Faust 1994, p. 102) and each point is connected directly to every other point.
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D’Agata, R., Tomaselli, V. (2013). Classifying Tourism Destinations: An Application of Network Analysis. In: Giudici, P., Ingrassia, S., Vichi, M. (eds) Statistical Models for Data Analysis. Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Organization. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00032-9_12
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