ABSTRACT
Destination performance evaluation has become an increasingly important task for effective destination management. However, it is perceived as a complex task due to the inclusion of diverse subsectors, business components and performance elements of the tourism and allied sectors. Although destination performance evaluation is a tedious task, it is essential for enhancing destination image, positioning, and ultimately achieving market leadership. The positioning of a tourist destination in terms of its performance is inevitable for building external competencies. There are many advantages in evaluating the performance of tourist destinations, such as, to understand the efficiency of tourism resources, the strength of resource availability, marketing strategies and promotions, and to strengthen policies. Destination performance evaluation also facilitates the enforcement of successful policies and minimizes and eliminates unsuccessful policies and processes. Traditional destination performance is evaluated by using the satisfaction index of the visitors. However, such attempts will only limit to evaluate the perception of the visitors. Destination benchmarking is a comprehensive and holistic approach that can be adopted for destination performance evaluation in a most effective and critical way. Nevertheless, there are several benchmarking models which exist at different levels, such as: (a) Internal Benchmarking, (b) External Benchmarking, (c) Generic Benchmarking, (d) Competitive Benchmarking, (e) Functional Benchmarking, and (f) Relationship Benchmarking. Rare attempts are made to consolidate destination 168performance indices to develop a destination performance model. This chapter is an attempt to develop an internal benchmarking model and adoption methods to execute it.
