Do online information sources really make tourists visit more diverse places? Based on the social networking analysis

This study investigated whether or not online tourism information prompted the international tourists who visited South Korea in 2015 to visit a wide range of tourism destinations, in particular those in non-capital regions, by comparing the tourist site networks of online and offline information seeker groups. It was hypothesized that the data would confirm how well the smart tourism ecosystem has been built and contributed to South Korea's tourism industry by showing that online tourism information leads tourists to visit more geographically diverse sites. Using network analysis with big data, the results showed that the offline information seeker group had geographically wider movement patterns than the online information seekers. In other words, the offline information seeker group showed movements in various directions and frequent visits to non-capital regions as opposed to the online information seeker group, which was highly dependent on the capital region. Thus, this study suggested that current online tourism information about South Korea did not provide appropriate tourism information to fulfill the needs of international tourists. This, consequently, might interrupt the implementation of smart tourism ecosystem efforts. Based on these results, this study had highlighted the importance of delivering both regionally and contextually diverse tourism information via online information sources.