For decades, the discovery journey for a $3,000-a-night hotel room followed a predictable path. A glossy spread in Condé Nast Traveller. A whispered recommendation from a dialed-in advisor with a rolodex of the right people. A feature in a high-authority pink weekend paper that plunks down on the doorstep of homes on the Peak in Hong Kong and on the Upper East Side.
That system hasn’t disappeared and is still important. But the entire influence mix is being rapidly replaced by a new intermediary: the large language model (LLM).
When a traveler asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for “the best wellness resort in the Maldives for a milestone birthday,” the response doesn’t stem from masthead meetings or a 20-year relationship with a travel designer. It is now synthesized from Reddit threads like r/FatTravel or r/FatTrips, a smattering of Tripadvisor reviews, free articles, and whatever data the model can parse.
The Performance Paradox
An interesting r
