Evaluation of the attractiveness of tourism destinations based on link analysis

Abstract

This paper discusses an approach to assess travel attractiveness of a tourist destination. It is based on calculating the link number of the official websites of the tourism attractions within the destination and analyzing the spatial distribution of the links. The approach is extended to the destination scale and a new travel attractiveness appraising method based on link analysis is proposed. The process includes four steps: (1) Ascertaining the range of a tourist destination.; (2) Confirming the tourism attractions in the range of the tourist destination. The common confirming methods include confirming by the local tourist guide to determine the attractions, by the determination of the local commercial companies and by the determination of the administration; (3) Calculating the travel attractiveness of each tourism attraction. Guided by the previous research conclusion the travel attractiveness of a tourism attraction can be indicated with the link account of its official website; (4) Confirming the travel attractiveness of the tourist destination by the travel attractiveness of each tourism attraction. Because every attraction has its own influence toward the attractiveness of the tourist destination, the travel attractiveness of the destination is not simply equal to the summation of the attractiveness for each tourism attraction, but must be calculated with its own weight. The weight can be confirmed by the spatial range of its official website' links for every tourism attraction: the more extensive the spatial range of the links is, the stronger the attractiveness of the attraction has and the higher the weight is. With the weighted summation of the attractiveness of each tourism attraction, finally the travel attractiveness of the tourist destination is determined. This paper uses this method to calculate the travel attractiveness of Xi'an and analyzes the advantages and limitations of this method.