A Social Network Analysis of Tourist Movement Patterns in Blogs: Korean Backpackers in Europe

Given recent developments in information and communication technology, the number of individual tourists enjoying free travel without the advice of travel agencies is increasing. Therefore, such tourists can visit more tourist destinations and create more complex movement patterns than mass tourists. These tourist movement patterns are a key factor in understanding tourist behavior and they contain various information that is important for tourism marketers. In this vein, this study aims to investigate tourist movement patterns in Europe. We acquired 122 data points from posts on the NAVER blog, which is the most famous social media platform in Korea. These data were transformed into matrix data for social network analysis and analyzed for centrality. The results suggest that Korean backpackers in Europe tend to enter Europe through London and Paris. Venezia and Firenze are also key cities.