Network Analysis of Tourist Destinations : The Case of Daegu City, South Korea

This paper aims to investigate the structure of destination network and identify influential tourist sites within a city and structural relationship between them. We conducted network analysis based on search volumes from Korean search engine, Naver. The results showed that T1 (Dongseongro, downtown), T2 (Seomun market, traditional Korean market), T8 (Mt. Biseulsan), T3 (Suseongpot, lake) and T11 (Donghwasa, buddhist temple) were revealed as the top 5 influential tourist sites in Daegu, South Korea. We also employed the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) for verifying the structural relationship between the tourist site network and physical distance network. The network of online co-occurrence of tourist sites showed that the interlinked amount of online information between the sites follows the distance between the sites: the further distance between the tourist sites, the fewer online information available. Finally, we identified structural groups of tourist sites on a basis of CONCOR analysis.