We already have an overtourism problem. Whole cities are fighting back, with visitor caps, day-tripper fees, and in Barcelona, residents spraying tourists with water pistols. Now the travel industry is handing the planning over to AI, and the early signs are that it makes the crowding worse.

The worry is not unique to travel. From the Pope to the classroom, the warning is the same: lean on AI too hard, and it starts doing your thinking for you. Travel’s version has a name now. Algorithmic overtourism.

The industry is betting big on the tools. Last year, by one McKinsey count, 45% of venture funding in travel went to AI-built startups. Booking Holdings set aside around $700 million for 2026, much of it for generative AI. Travelers are following. Among Americans over fifty, the share using AI to find travel deals doubled in a year, from 8% to 16%.

The same question, the same answer

When millions of people ask the same few models the same question, they get the same few answers. Recommendation engines run on popularity bias: they push what is already popular and bury the rest. Researchers fed fifty trip requests to ChatGPT, and the suggestions landed on the same short list of famous places, the ones already drowning. The quieter alternatives surfaced only when someone asked for them by name. International arrivals passed their pre-pandemic peak last year. Venice receives 30 million visitors a year, compared with fewer than 50,000 residents. The model does not know the bridge is full. It keeps sending people to it.

Use it, don’t obey it

Like every field wrestling with AI, travel has to stay in charge. The answer is to push the tools past their first generic answer, rather than taking it, as we have argued throughout the series, to address all the issues and to put human expertise back in the picture. AI will find you a flight in four seconds, so that stopped being worth paying for. What is worth paying for is what a model trained on the open internet cannot give you: someone who has been there. Two in five travelers still use a human advisor for part of their trip, and the best of them are no longer order-takers.

Use AI. Just use it to build the trip that is yours.