Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Information Processing and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/infoproman Do online information sources really make tourists visit more diverse places?: Based on the social networking analysis Hyunae Lee a , Namho Chung b , Yoonjae Nam c, ⁎ a Department of Hotel Management, Graduate School, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea b Department of Hotel Management, College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea c Department of Culture, Tourism & Contents, College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, 26 Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Online tourism information Offline tourism information Smart tourism Network analysis Big data ABSTRACT 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 par- ticular 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 de- pendent 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 in- ternational 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. 1. Introduction Tourism is an industry that contributes to overcoming local gaps by promoting regional economic development (Clarke, 1981; Jackson, 2006). However, tourism-related supply and demand is typically concentrated on specific areas even in developed countries, so there is rarely an even distribution of tourism's economic and social impact. In the case of South Korea, although it welcomed 17 million tourists in 2016 (Tourgo, 2017), the vast majority of them (78.7%) visited only Seoul, the capital city. Very few were found to visit areas outside the capital city. The ten most popular sites in South Korea were all in the Seoul region (Myung-dong; the Dongdaemun Market; the royal palaces of the Joseon Dynasty, such as Gyeongbokgung Palace and Deoksugung Palace; Namsan Mountain and Seoul Tower; Sinchon and Hong-ik University Streets; the Namdaemun Market, museums; Insa-dong; Jamsil and Lotte World; and Gangnam Station). As these data demonstrate, the degree of international tourists’ concentration in specific places is significant. This study considers a lack of regional information to be one of the most critical causes for the poor distribution of tourism monies. In other words, tourism information is often concentrated in specific well-known places, such as capital regions. This https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2018.01.005 Received 26 August 2017; Received in revised form 9 December 2017; Accepted 10 January 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: halee8601@khu.ac.kr (H. Lee), nhchung@khu.ac.kr (N. Chung), ynam@khu.ac.kr (Y. Nam). Information Processing and Management xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0306-4573/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Lee, H., Information Processing and Management (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2018.01.005