International tourism network

The interest in tourism has always been strong, for its important role in economic flows among nations. On this study we analyze the arrivals of international tourism' (edges) over 206 countries and territories (nodes) around the world, on the year 2004. International tourist arrivals reached a record of 763 million in 2004. We characterize analytically the topological and weighted properties of the resulting network. International tourist arrivals are analyzed over in strength and out strength flows, resulting on a highly directed network, with a very heterogeneity of weights and strengths. The inclusion of edge weights and directions on the analysis of network architecture allows a more realistic insight on the structure of the networks. Centrality, assortativity and disparity are measured for the topological and weighted structure. Assortativity measures the tendency of having a high weight edges connecting two nodes with similar degrees. ITN is disassortative, opposite to social network. Disparity quantifies the how similar are the flows on a node neighborhood, measuring the heterogeneity of weights for in flows and out flows of tourism. These results provide an application of the recent methods of weighted and directed networks, showing that weights are relevant and that in general the modeling of complex networks must go beyond topology. The network structure may, influence how tourism hubs, distribution of flows, and centralization can be explored on countries strategic positioning and policy making.