Satisfaction of both local inhabitants and visitors plays a crucial role in destination development.

The local community can be impacted both positively and negatively by tourism. Related positive aspects are the creation of jobs, economic activity, and improved social services. However, tourism can cause stress or damage to local resources and cultural values.
Continuously measuring the level of satisfaction of locals and tourists can help to detect potential problems, such as stress, noise, and other forms of disutility from tourism, even before these problems unfold a severe negative impact on the host-guest relationship. For the moment, only indirect measures of local satisfaction measurement have been addressed (such as the prices of rents and goods, and the tourism intensity index) but STOST is planning a collaboration with ASTAT and ISTAT to survey this aspect.