MEININGER asked 5 AIs where to holiday. Heidelberg and Rome won

MEININGER Hotels ran an experiment that says more about how travellers now plan trips than about the destinations themselves. They asked five AI models, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity, to score 100 popular destinations in Germany and another 100 across Europe, plus each place's biggest annual event. Heidelberg came out on top in Germany and Rome led Europe, both with 94.4 out of 100, as reported by Hotel News Resource.

What strikes me is the timing. A growing share of guests now ask an assistant before they ever open a booking engine, so whatever these models say about a city becomes part of that city's funnel whether the local hoteliers like it or not. The interesting bit is that the criteria the AIs leaned on, big annual events and general popularity, are exactly the levers a destination marketer can actually pull. Feed the models with your festival calendar, your shoulder-season stories, your F&B scene. That is a distribution channel now, and it lives outside the OTA.

My read: hotels and DMOs should start treating AI assistants as a channel to be fed, not a black box to complain about. Curate what they see, and you shape what they recommend.