Destinations now have to please AI, not just travellers

A report from Create Consulting China has mapped how artificial intelligence behaves when Chinese travellers ask it to recommend international destinations. The finding is blunt: the recommendations AI hands back are already steering real trip planning, and most destinations have zero control over what that answer says about them.

The study, led by Alfred Li, vice president of the consultancy, analyses how the model picks and ranks places, what it highlights and what it quietly leaves out. For a hotel or a DMO, that means the battle for visibility has moved from Google rankings and OTA listings to a black box nobody fully understands yet.

My read: this is an opportunity more than a threat. Whoever feeds clean, structured, well-attributed content about their destination will show up in those AI answers. Whoever doesn't, disappears. The work is the same as always, just a new distribution channel.