Purpose – Tourism systems have been considered more and more in the light of complexity and
chaos theories. Most of the work done in this area has highlighted the reasons for and the issues
regarding this approach. A steadily growing strand of the recent literature uses the theories to
overcome the problems of a reductionist and mechanistic view that is considered unable to provide a
full understanding of the structural and dynamic characteristics of tourism systems, and specifically
of tourism destinations. This paper seeks to continue this approach and to provide a series of
quantitative methods to assess the dynamics of non-linear complex tourism systems.
Design/methodology/approach – The time series used in the paper contains data collected from a
sample of 23 large (four-star) hotels located in Milan, Italy. For each structure daily data of occupancy,
average room rate and RevPAR (revenue per available room) were recorded for the period 2006-2009.
The daily distributions of these observations are highly skewed, and therefore the median of the daily
values were considered. This results in three series of 1,461 points per type (occupancy, room rate and
RevPAR).
Findings – The data confirm the complex nature of the destination system and its tendency towards
a chaotic state. Additionally, high stability and long memory effects are detected. The outcomes and
the implications of this analysis are examined.