Destination performance evaluation has become an increasingly important task for effective destination management and sustainable destination development. However, it is a complex task due to the inclusion of diverse subsectors, business components and performance elements. Measuring tourist satisfaction considering different satisfaction components is an integral part of measuring destination performance in a consumer’s point of view. Hence, this study attempts to propose a new performance evaluation model for Tourist Satisfaction Index (TSI) for measuring destination performance. The model is tested in the state of Kerala in South India to measure the performance of tourist destination. Confirmatory factor analysis using Structural Equation Modeling is used to test the model. The results reveal that the proposed model fits in measuring tourist satisfaction and hence the model can be used as an Index Core Components (ICC) for destination performance evaluation for internal destination benchmarking.