Taking the destination of Huangshan as a case study, its virtual network is examined to explore the structural characteristics based on complex theory. The results show that it is a sparse network with small world effect; its degree distribution follows power law with exponents between 1 and 2; its nodes tend to link the other nodes with different types, and the interconnection of the nodes is not influenced by distance and degree. Huangshan tourism network is compared with random network, WWW and other tourism web networks for exploring the relationship between virtual and real tourism networks. The authors argue that the network of tourism websites is not only an information network but also a social network and it can be seen as a close representation of its real network in the web space. In this sense, the structural characteristics of the web graph of a destination directly reflect the features of its real network.

The number of inlink to a tourist attraction's official website has been interpreted as its attractiveness in the previous study. However, hyperlink creation motivation study is required to validate this finding. For overcoming the problems of motivation research at present, this paper provides a new method based on reference theory, which considers that the domain name of a tourist attraction's website has not only reference(that is, refers to a website) , but also meaning (reflects the significance of using its hyperlink). Through a case study of Mt. Huangshan, it shows that the inlink creation is not random, the domain names which have the same reference could have different meaning and its meaning reflects the distribution of the significance of using its hyperlink. It also shows that the main creation motivations of inlink to a tourist website are to recommend the tourist attractions. In particular, almost 90% of inlinks pointing to the domain name (www.tourmart.cn) which is the most representative for Huangshan Mountain are related to tourism. The results above provide evidence for the interpretation of the tourist attraction?s inlink count as its attractiveness.

To measurethe impact of a mega-event on the awareness of tourism attractions in host city, an approach was developed based upon hyperlink analysis ?Hyperlink Change Analysis. Its idea is based on two assumptions: 1) the larger the number of inlinks of the tourism attraction’s official Web site , the higher its awareness; 2) under general circumstances, the growth of the number of inlinks of tourismattraction’s official site is similar to linear growth. If these two assumptions are correct, then the general growth pattern will be changed by mega-events, so that change of inlinks can measure the impact of a mega-event on the awareness of tourism attractions in host city. The paper explores the feasibility of hyperlink change analysis through researching the change of the number of inlinks of Beijing tourism attractions’official Web site during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.