Introducing the Dynamic Destination Satisfaction Method: An Analytical Tool to Track Tourism Destination Satisfaction Trends with Repeated Cross-sectional Data

Abstract

This study introduces a new method, named Dynamic Destination Satisfaction Method (DDSME), to model tourists’ satisfaction with a destination (and its attributes), breaking it down into an individual-level component (linked to the specific individual tourists’ perceptions) and a system-level (time-related) component (common to all the tourists). Moreover, this work develops a matrix “entropy/trend accuracy” that destination managers can use to understand to what extent managing a specific attribute has increased tourists’ satisfaction with the destination over multiyear time spans. We test the innovative method on a large data set, covering the period 1997-2015 and including almost 0.8 million observations. By doing so, we analyze tourists’ satisfaction with tourism-related sectors and attributes of Italy as an inbound tourism destination and we use the matrix to map out destination attributes over time. The findings indicate that courtesy, art, and food are strategic attributes to enhance satisfaction in the long term.