Predicting the Evolution of the National Tuorism in Italy: a Social Network Analysis

The national tourist traffic between Italian regions can be viewed as a network where the nodes are the regions while the links are the number of national visitor arrivals. The aim of the present study was to model the network... [ view full abstract ]

The national tourist traffic between Italian regions can be viewed as a network where the nodes are the regions while the links are the number of national visitor arrivals. The aim of the present study was to model the network linkage structure and predict the evolution of the tourist traffic in dependence on perturbations of the initial state of the system such as variations in the number of accommodation facilities or congress centres. Dataset consisted of the numbers of national visitor arrivals in each Italian region between 2008 and 2013 (GeoWebStarter, Istituto Guglielmo Tagliacarne, Fondazione Unioncamere). The basic element we assumed to describe the tourist traffic in the network is a very intuitive measure of the tourist attractiveness of a region in a year, that is the travel-in rate (TIR). It is computed as the ratio of the number of visitor arrivals in that region to the total number of national visitor arrivals in Italy, so it ranges from 0 (no arrival in the region) to 1 (all national visitor arrivals are concentrated in only one region): the larger the TIR, the larger the attractiveness of the region. Therefore, to model the network linkage structure, we propose a beta regression model, that fits the TIR ratio and its relation with predictors such as the number of seaside, mountain and watering places, the geographical proximity, the number of accommodation facilities or congress centres, etc. The fitted model was successfully applied to the Italian tourist transfer network, where showed a good explained variation and a reasonable root mean square error. Finally, simulation studies allowed to assess the impact of new infrastructure investments (new accommodation facilities, new congress centres, …) on the TIR ratio and the tourist flow between Italian regions.