Destination Sunday: Your Destination Has a Story You’ve Never Read
How AI, Google, and Reddit shape what visitors believe about your town before they arrive.
A couple is planning a long weekend. Tuesday night. Couch. Two screens.
They don’t start on your website. They start on Google, an AI summary, and a Reddit thread from 2022. In 12 minutes, they build a version of your town from sources no one at the destination has reviewed.
That’s the version they’re deciding from. You’ve never seen it assembled.
The assumption that keeps this invisible
Most destinations assume: we have a brand, a website, a social presence. We’re managing our story.
Here’s where it breaks. Your published story is one input among dozens. For a growing share of travelers, it’s not even the first one they encounter. The AI summary, the cached blog post, the old listicle that still ranks on page one. That composite is the working draft of your destination’s identity for most people researching a trip.
Nobody at the destination has assembled it to see what it says. Not because anyone failed. Because this gap sits between job descriptions. And until recently, it wasn’t anyone’s job.
The research path has changed. Your site enters late.
Marriott Bonvoy’s 2026 travel research, drawn from over 22,000 consumers, found that half of all travelers surveyed have used AI to plan or research a trip. Up from 26% two years earlier.
And once they use it, they trust it. A TakeUp survey of U.S. leisure travelers found 94% of AI users trust the recommendations as much as search engines or travel sites, while 52% say inaccuracy is their top complaint.
They trust it. And it’s often wrong.
The cost of that isn’t dramatic. It’s the steady loss of bookings that never form. People who researched your town, built a picture that didn’t pull them in, and moved on without you knowing they looked. It shows up in destinations with full marketing teams. And in towns where tourism is one line on the chamber director’s job description.
How this shows up on the ground
Closed businesses still appearing in search results. Seasonal descriptions displayed as year-round. A blog post that calls your downtown a “thriving food scene.” Three restaurants, two of them seasonal.
The couple from the couch arrives carrying that version. They don’t complain. They recalibrate. The lunch spot the blog recommended is closed on Wednesdays. The walk to the waterfront takes longer than the map implied. Not angry. Adjusting. That adjustment is where your review score lives. In the distance between what they expected and what they found.
Last month in Tasmania, a tour company’s AI-generated blog sent visitors to a natural hot spring that doesn’t exist. That’s the extreme version. Yours will be smaller. A closed restaurant. Wrong hours. Same pattern. Information you didn’t write shaping visits you didn’t expect.
Your operators already know what visitors are confused about. The barista who gets asked three times a week where the trailhead is? She knows the Google Maps pin is off. Nobody’s collected that intelligence yet.
When you see it, you can work with it
The audit takes 20 minutes. Open an incognito browser window. Research your town the way someone who’s never been would. Begin with Google. Then an AI tool. Then Reddit or TripAdvisor. Write down what you find.
Some of it will be wrong. Some will be outdated. And some of it will be better than you expected. A review that says what you wish your tagline said.
You can fix what you can fix: Google listings, outdated hours, your own site. You can influence what feeds the AI, because AI answers are built from sources. Those sources are often the same outdated listings and blog posts you found in your search.
You can’t edit the AI. You can edit what it reads. Start there.
This works. When Tennessee’s tourism board audited rural businesses through a Destination Optimization Program, they found most profiles were incomplete. They fixed them. Visibility improved. Listings ranked better. Photos reached millions.
And you can talk to your operators. Not a briefing. A conversation. “Here’s what visitors are finding when they research us. What are you hearing from guests?” When your front-desk staff and your shop owners know what story the visitor arrived with, the first interaction stops being a correction and starts being a confirmation.
When the picture matches the place, the stay makes sense from the start. What makes sense sticks. And what sticks isn’t what they consumed. It’s the thing they carry home that makes them want to come back.
This week
Twenty minutes. Incognito window. No logins, no dashboards. Search your town the way they search it. Screenshot what’s wrong. That screenshot is your next board slide.
Then ask yourself:
When was the last time you researched your destination the way a stranger would? Not your website. The full path from search bar to booking decision.
Do you know what an AI tool says about your town right now? If you haven’t checked, that’s most destinations. It takes two minutes.
Which closed businesses, wrong hours, or stale descriptions are still circulating online and sending visitors to a version of your town that no longer exists?
If someone assembled everything they could find about your destination in fifteen minutes tonight, would you stand behind that picture?
You have a marketing strategy. You may not have an information strategy. The visitor doesn’t know the difference.
Orientation doesn’t begin at check-in. It begins at the search bar.
FAQs
How do travelers research destinations before booking?
Most travelers now research destinations through a combination of Google search, AI tools like ChatGPT, Reddit threads, TripAdvisor reviews, and cached blog posts. Marriott Bonvoy’s 2026 research found that 50% of travelers have used AI to plan or research a trip, up from 26% two years prior. Roughly 60% of Google searches end without a click to any external website, meaning many visitors form their impression of a destination entirely from search results and AI-generated summaries without ever visiting the official tourism site.
How accurate is AI-generated travel information?
AI-generated travel recommendations frequently contain errors. A TakeUp survey of U.S. leisure travelers found that while 94% of AI users trust the recommendations, 52% cite inaccuracy as their top complaint. A tourism researcher cited by CNN noted that roughly nine out of ten AI-generated travel itineraries contain mistakes, ranging from recommending closed businesses to fabricating attractions that don’t exist.
How can a destination audit its online information?
A destination information audit takes approximately 20 minutes. Open an incognito browser window and research your town as a first-time visitor would: start with Google, then an AI tool, then Reddit or TripAdvisor. Document what appears, noting outdated listings, closed businesses, wrong hours, and inaccurate descriptions. Fix what you can directly and influence what feeds AI answers by correcting information at the source.
What is a destination information landscape?
A destination’s information landscape is the complete set of online information a potential visitor encounters when researching a place, including search engine results, AI-generated summaries, social media posts, review sites, blog posts, and cached content. Unlike a destination’s brand or marketing, which the destination controls, this landscape is assembled from many sources and is often outdated, incomplete, or written by people with no connection to the community.
P.S. One simple exercise: search your own property name in an incognito window and read the AI summary out loud. Would you stand behind that description?