ABSTRACT
Tourism systems, and tourism destinations in particular, can be defined in many ways and using different approaches; however, it is widely recognized that they can be considered as being complex dynamic systems composed of different entities and resources interacting in nontrivial and complicated ways for satisfying needs and wishes of its users. Many diverse methods have been proposed for the analysis of a complex system and the toolbox of the complexity scientist is today quite crowded. Statistical physics is the strong theoretical framework that justifies all the methods discussed here for the study of a complex system. A useful list of programs is the following: All the outcomes of the analyses described here need a sound qualitative interpretation in order to provide useful insights. Today, the network science toolbox can rely on several metrics obtained by combining those coming from the social network analysis tradition with those developed in more recent mathematical studies.
