Travel and tourism: Into a complex network

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the complex network structure of global tourism, highlighting the transition from random to scale-free networks and emphasizing the role of weighted connections and strategic positioning in economic and technological interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed network perspective on global tourism, revealing the heterogeneous, directed, and weighted nature of international travel flows.

Findings

Tourist flows form a scale-free network of intensities.

Weighted connections significantly influence network dynamics.

Strategic positioning benefits from market diversity.

Abstract

It is discussed how the worldwide tourist arrivals, about 10% of world's domestic product, form a largely heterogeneous and directed complex network. Remarkably the random network of connectivity is converted into a scale-free network of intensities. The importance of weights on network connections is brought into discussion. It is also shown how strategic positioning particularly benefit from market diversity and that interactions among countries prevail on a technological and economic pattern, questioning the backbones of traveling driving forces.