Removing Uncontrollable Factors in Benchmarking Tourism Destination Satisfaction

Abstract

High level of visitor satisfaction is an important signal of sustained success for tourism destinations. The primary goal of this research study is to identify differences in reported visitor satisfaction that do not accurately reflect differences in the delivery of satisfaction by destinations. Our aim is to reveal the influence of factors, such as weather conditions, that may distort comparisons of tourism destinations when measuring visitors’ satisfaction with their stays. We used a generalized linear model (GLM) to estimate reported satisfaction as a function of various factors, with weather included as a factor. The analysis shows that weather as well as the other extraneous factors play an important role in measuring visitors’ satisfaction. The results suggest that when comparing the relative success of various tourism destinations, adjustments in destination benchmarking are necessary to avoid arbitrary bias caused by differences in the timing and conditions of visitor data collection.