Way before the brave new world of AI, we already had trust issues when it comes to the travel industry and their presentation of hotels, resorts, restaurants and attractions. It was with the internet, and reviews that were posted online — that were fake. And wildly misleading supporting visuals that were photo shopped.

And there were the words themselves, more often than not ending in the letters “st,” as in “best,” “finest,” “most,” and “loveliest,” and descriptions like “unforgettable,” “incredible,” and let’s not forget “paradise,” or misleading phrases like “old world charm,” or “steps from the beach.”

Fake online reviews have become an ever-growing scam.

But how can you know what to believe?

Almost every time we consider making a hotel booking, a restaurant reservation, we tend to let our ultimate decision run through the same filter: what do the reviews say? The trouble is that a growing share of what shows up in that search isn't real. It's manufactured — sometimes by a hotel's own marketing team, sometimes by a rival restaurant trying to tank a competitor, and now…increasingly,,, by AI tools that can generate a hundred plausible-sounding guest stories an hour, complete with invented anniversaries or on the negative side by imaginary health department citations or broken air conditioners, stained carpets, or worse.

For travelers, that's more than an annoyance. A bad restaurant recommendation costs you a meal. A fake five-star hotel review can cost you a vacation.