Every week, someone in our industry asks some version of this question. A client, a journalist, a young PR professional just starting out — or, increasingly, a destination marketing director staring at a budget line for agency fees and wondering whether they should just subscribe to a few AI tools instead. I’ve been in travel PR for nearly 20 years. I’ve watched this industry survive the internet, social media, the pandemic, and a dozen other “this will change everything” moments. And now, AI.
So let me give you the direct answer first: No, AI will not kill travel PR. But it will absolutely kill bad travel PR. And there is, frankly, a lot of bad travel PR out there that deserves to be killed.
The tension I want to explore here is this — AI is not a threat to great storytelling, genuine editorial relationships, or cultural intelligence. It is, however, a direct and existential threat to agencies that have been coasting on media lists, copy-pasted press releases, and FAM trips with no strategy behind them. If that describes your operation, then yes: you should be worried. For the rest of us, this is the most interesting moment our industry has ever faced.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that nobody in our industry likes to say out loud: for too long, too much of what passes for “travel PR” has been recycled press releases, generic pitches blasted to 500-person media lists, and FAM trips with no clear editorial strategy beyond hoping someone writes something nice. AI can do all of that. Faster. Cheaper. And without asking for a business-class upgrade.
If your agency’s core value proposition is managing a database of media contacts and sending press releases, then the conversation is already over. That function is being automated, and it should be. But here’s the thing — that was never what great travel PR was supposed to be in the first place. The agencies that are genuinely anxious about AI are the ones who, somewhere along the way, forgot that their job was to tell stories that move people — not to fill inboxes
The best work I have seen in this industry — campaigns that genuinely changed how the world perceived a destination — came from insight, instinct, and a deep understanding of culture. None of that is in a media database. None of that fits in a press release template. And none of it is going away.
Let me be specific, because vague hand-wringing about “the future of AI” is exactly what bad PR looks like. There are three concrete shifts happening right now that every travel communicator needs to understand.
First: How travelers discover destinations has fundamentally changed. The majority of Mexican travelers — and this mirrors patterns we are seeing across Latin America — now use AI assistants as a primary tool in trip planning. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity: these are the new search engines. And here is why this matters for PR specifically: AI language models learn from content published in high-authority media outlets. When Condé Nast Traveler, National Geographic, or a major regional publication covers your destination, that content feeds the models that millions of people will consult when planning their next trip. Earned media is now currency in a way it has never been before. The placement is not just reach — it is training data.
Second: Content production is accelerating at a rate that changes the competitive landscape overnight. AI can draft, translate, localize, and distribute content at a scale that would have required a team of ten people three years ago. For agencies that embrace this strategically, it is an extraordinary multiplier. For agencies that ignore it — or worse, fear it — it is a competitive death sentence. At BrandsTravel, we are using AI to accelerate production without sacrificing editorial quality. The goal is always more bandwidth for the work that actually requires human judgment.
Third: The metrics are evolving, and most agencies are not keeping up. Traditional AVE — Advertising Value Equivalent — was always a flawed measure, and the industry has known it for years. What is replacing it is more interesting: influence metrics, LLM visibility scores, and share-of-conversation in AI-generated travel recommendations. When someone asks ChatGPT “Where should I go in Mexico for a long weekend?” — does your client’s destination appear in the answer? That is the new KPI. And very few agencies know how to move that needle yet.
This is where I want to be personal, because abstract arguments about “human creativity” do not convince anyone. Let me tell you specifically what AI cannot replace in this work.
It cannot replicate the relationship between a PR professional and a magazine editor built over fifteen years of trust. Knowing when to pitch. Knowing when to hold back. Knowing that a particular editor is going through a difficult editorial cycle right now and this is not the week. Knowing exactly what angle will make them say yes on a Thursday afternoon — not because of data, but because you have had dinner with them, you know what they care about, and you have never wasted their time. That is not a skill set. That is a relationship. Relationships are not scalable through software.
It cannot read the room in a geopolitical moment. Knowing when NOT to pitch a destination. Knowing how to reframe a story during a crisis — a hurricane, a security incident, a political shift — with the kind of cultural sensitivity and timing that protects both the destination and the media relationship. I have had to make those calls in real time, under pressure, and the margin for error is zero. No model is making that call for you.
It cannot understand that a journalist from Monterrey needs a completely different angle than one from Mexico City for the exact same destination. Regional nuance. Class dynamics. Editorial culture. The unspoken rules of how different media ecosystems in our country actually work. This is hard-won knowledge. It lives in people, not in prompts.
And it cannot originate. AI can optimize. It can remix. It can suggest. But the spark of a campaign idea — the kind that becomes a cultural moment, that makes a destination suddenly feel relevant and desirable to an audience that had never considered it — that comes from creative instinct that is distinctly human. The best campaign idea I ever had came from a conversation over coffee that had nothing to do with the client. That is not a workflow. That is a mind at work.
Finally: it cannot shake hands. The relationship economy that underpins all great PR — the press breakfast, the editorial one-on-one, the FAM trip where a journalist falls genuinely in love with a place and writes something extraordinary because they were moved — is irreplaceable. Travel, more than almost any other industry, is built on human experience. The communications around it must be too.
I want to be transparent about what we are actually doing — not just what we believe conceptually, but how we are building the agency for this moment.
We have integrated AI tools across our workflow: drafting, translation, media monitoring, content gap analysis, and competitive landscape mapping. Things that used to take a junior account manager two days now take two hours. We are using that reclaimed time to invest in the things that actually move the needle — deeper editorial strategy, stronger client relationships, and more creative campaign development.
We are training our entire team to use AI as a creative accelerator, not a replacement for thought. The prompt is not the product. The insight behind the prompt is the product. We are building the discipline of using these tools without letting them flatten our voice or our strategy.
We are investing seriously in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — the emerging practice of ensuring that our clients’ destinations appear in AI-generated travel recommendations. This means targeting high-authority publications, structuring content so it is machine-readable as well as human-compelling, and building the kind of consistent earned media presence that feeds the models people are actually consulting. This is new territory, and we are learning fast.
And we are doubling down on what has always been our irreplaceable advantage: editorial relationships cultivated over decades, deep cultural intelligence across the Americas, and a creative team that knows how to find the story that no one else is telling.
If you are a destination marketing organization or a tourism brand reading this — and I know many of you are — here is what I want you to take away from this piece.
The question is not whether to use AI in your PR strategy. That question is already settled: of course you should. The real question is whether your agency understands both sides of the equation — the technology and the human craft. Because an agency that only knows the tools will produce content that is fast, cheap, and forgettable. And an agency that refuses to evolve will simply be left behind.
Destinations that win in the AI era will be those that invest in both dimensions simultaneously. The agencies that survive — and thrive — will be the ones that use AI to be smarter, faster, and more creatively ambitious, while never losing sight of the fundamental truth: travel is a deeply human experience. The desire to explore, to be surprised, to be changed by a place — you cannot automate that. And the communications work that serves that desire must remain human at its core.
AI will not kill travel PR. It will sharpen it. It will raise the bar. It will expose the agencies that were never adding real value in the first place — and it will do so quickly and without mercy.
For those of us who have always believed that great PR is about stories, relationships, and cultural intelligence — this moment is not a threat. It is the greatest opportunity our industry has ever seen.
The bar for mediocrity just got raised. I find that incredibly exciting.
