We made up a ski resort.
No mountain. No snow. No lifts.
Which, admittedly, are three pretty important parts of the business.
We called it Mirage Mountain and gave it everything else: a brand, a website, a trail map, amenities, reviews, rankings and enough detail to make the whole thing feel surprisingly real. The question was whether AI tools would ever recommend it alongside actual ski resorts.
At first, they didn’t.
The models were skeptical, confused or simply ignored it. So we kept building the digital footprint around the idea. We input more useful information, more structure, more context and more signals from the kinds of sources AI systems were already finding.
Then Mirage Mountain started showing up. Not just when we asked about it, but in broader trip-planning prompts alongside real resorts. Across thousands of prompts, tens of thousands of citations and 100 resorts, a place that did not exist had worked its way into the consideration set.
That was the part that stuck with me. If an invented destination could become understandable enough to be recommended, what does that say about real destinations that have incredible experiences but still fail to appear when travelers are deciding where to go?
That is increasingly the challenge.
Travelers don’t always begin with a destination name. They ask for a long weekend with great trails and food, a family trip with enough to do if it rains or somewhere warm that works for three generations. A short list can start forming before anyone searches for a place directly.
According to research from MMGY, Mindtrip, Sojern and Sabre, 40% of travelers said they had discovered a destination through AI, while 29% said an AI recommendation had changed their plans. Brand building still matters, but the work now starts earlier. A destination must be clear about what it offers and distinct enough to enter the conversation before the traveler knows to ask for it.
That’s also why I still believe the destination website matters enormously. Its role is just broader than it used to be. Beautiful imagery can create desire, but travelers still need answers: What is open in November? How far is the airport? What can a family actually do in three days? Is it accessible? What will it cost?
Those answers need to be current, specific and consistent with what appears across maps, listings, local partners, reviews and other sources. In the Mirage experiment, we saw that some information was simply easier for AI systems to use than other information. Rankings, awards, structured answers, FAQs and clear, specific content all became meaningful signals.
The takeaway is not to start writing for robots.
It’s to make the destination easier to understand everywhere it shows up. That’s where discoverability starts to look a lot like brand strategy. If a place is described one way on its website, another way in listings and barely at all in the sources travelers and AI systems rely on, the story gets weaker.
In our experiment, as Mirage Mountain’s footprint became broader and more consistent, the models became more willing to treat it as a credible option.
The other lesson was even more familiar: Being distinct still matters. We did not position Mirage as “a great ski resort with something for everyone.” We gave it an ownable story, specific characteristics and a consistent point of view.
That matters because both people and machines have the same basic problem when everything sounds the same.
“Authentic,” “vibrant,” “welcoming” and “something for everyone” aren’t wrong, but they aren’t very useful if every destination can claim them. The better question is what your place is unusually good at, what kind of trip it’s best suited for and what someone should understand about it before they ever see the logo.
There’s a simple way to test that.
Ask several AI tools for trips your destination should genuinely be considered for, but leave the name out. Ask for the experience instead: a three-day hiking weekend with great restaurants, a multigenerational beach trip near a major airport, a fall getaway with biking and good food.
Then look at who appears, why they appear and what those places are being credited for. After that, look at your own destination.
Is the information there?
Is it current?
Is the thing that makes the place worth choosing actually obvious?
Mirage Mountain was an extreme version of that exercise. We started with nothing and watched a destination become more visible as its story, information and digital footprint became easier to understand. Real destinations already have the hard part: the actual experience.
The opportunity now is to make sure that experience can be found, understood and recommended wherever the decision starts – even before a traveler knows your name.