A quantitative valuation of tourist experience in Lisbon

• The process of measuring the satisfaction level of tourists.
• Multilevel Item Response Theory (IRT) models include a latent trait parameter and an item parameter.
• IRT modelling to measure the perceptions and related satisfaction of tourists.
• Georeferenced IRT models give geographically measures of tourist satisfaction.

The increasing value of tourist satisfaction for tourism promotion has led to a substantial increase in research into the process of measuring the satisfaction of tourists, and various approaches and theories have been developed.This paper proposes an Item Response Theory (IRT) approach to ensure the measurements of perceptions and satisfaction of tourists. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire administered to tourists who had visited Lisbon. The formulation of the IRT models allowed us to determine the influence of some demographic and travel behaviour characteristics on a number of given destination attributes. We also specified georeferenced IRT models to attain geographically differentiated measures of tourist satisfaction. The main findings from the models are compared and discussed.