# Topology of the World Tourism Web
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Network Topology and Structure
#### 3.1.3 Centrality Measures
The authority favors Canada (0.1273) with the highest coefficient, followed by the UAE, Belgium, Ecuador, and the United States (0.1258). The largest hubs are Germany (0.098), France, the United States, the UK, and Italy (0.097). Prestige centrality is a more refined measure and focuses on the direction of the ties. The prestige rank (normalized) suggests the following order: Canada, the UAE, Belgium, Ecuador, and Finland. While this cannot be explained in terms of choosing connections, it can indicate a country's popularity in 2018. For Canada, the prestige is relatable to its high in-degree, but it also has to do somewhat with a lower out-degree (as if tourists from almost every country want to go to Canada, but its residents are more restrictive when choosing their own tourist destinations, e.g., they do not reciprocate as much). The prestige rank calculation with weights sets the following country ranks: Belgium, Canada, Ecuador, the UAE, and Finland as top countries. The case of Belgium is interesting as it has a high in-degree of 229 and a much lower out-degree of 156, but its weighted out-degree is more than double its weighted in-degree. Belgium is chosen either by the countries high in rank or by many countries with a moderate rank. Since the countries are both the source and the target at the same time, some of them might have been chosen by Belgium, thus increasing their rank and Belgium's rank as well. In a way, that really adds motivation to be chosen by Belgian tourists. The page rank is claimed to be a better measure of popularity and it favors Uganda, Canada, Belgium, the UAE, and New Zealand. If one starts a walk over the tourism network, it is most likely that one will end up in Uganda (and according to its report, it is specifically true for many countries with only a few direct connections). The page rank calculated with weights sets the following ordering: the United States, China, Turkey, Italy, and Spain as the top destinations of 2018. The page rank calculated with weights is more informative, as it indicates probable tourist flows and the most likely destinations. In comparison to previous research [7], the top five of the top one outbound group in 2014 were the United States, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, and Botswana, and for the inbound group, the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Germany. Examination of normalized betweenness centrality shows that the United States has the highest coefficient (0.06), followed by Canada, Belgium, Australia, and New Zealand (0.02). Betweenness centrality points out to the relevance of countries that were not exactly expected to appear so high in ranks. However, in terms of the tourism network, this means that on these locations, tourists mix from different, otherwise unconnected countries. While this may resemble the mixing in the hubs, an important difference occurs: tourists from countries lower in the ranks arrive at hubs, and the residents of those hubs depart to authoritative countries, while betweenness highlights the countries where tourists mix with other tourists (e.g., tourists from countries that are not directly connected). While this may be more obvious for Belgium due to its political importance as a location of the headquarters of many international organizations, this measure highlights its melting-pot property. The explanation is not so obvious for Uganda (ranked 10 th), but according to its detailed report, it hosts tourists from many small countries (among them, island countries and dependent territories) where they may interact with tourists from otherwise unrelated countries, enforcing Uganda's position as a bridging country. According to previous research [8], the rank by betweenness values in 2014 was the United States, Canada, Belgium, Australia, China, and New Zealand, which shows that the ranking has not changed much.