Every year brings a list of things destination marketers are told will change everything. Most of them don’t reach the website. In 2026, several did, and they pulled in one direction: the destination website’s job became less about attracting clicks and more about being the most current, readable source of facts about a place.

Here are the changes that reached destination websites this year, grouped by what they mean, and the one thing to do about each in 2027.

1. More trip planning starts in AI answers

Google’s AI Mode has been available in Australia since October 2025 (Google Australia⁠ (opens in a new tab)). By July 2026, Alphabet said AI Mode had passed one billion monthly active users, and Google had brought AI Overviews and AI Mode together into one Search experience (Alphabet, July 2026⁠ (opens in a new tab)). In August, Google began rolling out hotel booking inside AI Mode in the United States, with the hotel or booking platform as merchant of record (Google, August 2026⁠ (opens in a new tab)).

For destination sites, the reason to exist got sharper. Assistants plan from what they can read, and the local, seasonal facts they need live on regional sites. We set out the argument in When AI books the hotel.

In 2027: pick your twenty most-asked planning questions and make sure each is answered in plain sentences, with dates, on a page an assistant can read.

2. AI traffic became measurable

Two reporting changes made the AI channel visible for the first time. GA4 added an AI Assistant channel on 13 May 2026, covering referrals from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot but not Google’s own AI features (Google Analytics⁠ (opens in a new tab)). And Search Console’s Generative AI performance report, which shows how often your links appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, had reached websites worldwide by 31 August (Search Console Help⁠ (opens in a new tab)). Google also stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search (Google Search Central⁠ (opens in a new tab)), a reminder that structured data is for machines that read, not for decorating results.

In 2027: report AI Assistant sessions and operator click-throughs to your board every quarter. Our GA4 setup guide takes an afternoon.

3. Operator data got richer, and stricter

ATDW added “EV Aware” and “EV Ready” accreditation attributes in August and retired the Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard at the end of September (ATDW release notes⁠ (opens in a new tab)). In June, ATDW and The Accessible Group announced that ATDW would recognise verified accessibility accreditation on participating profiles (The Accessible Group⁠ (opens in a new tab)). And ATDW advised operators to back up or remove vague green claims ahead of EU rules that apply from 27 September (ATDW⁠ (opens in a new tab)). Our roundup is ATDW in 2026.

In 2027: make sure your product pages show the fields that now exist, accessibility and accreditations first, and help operators fill them.

4. Tourism Australia put AI recommendation first

Tourism Australia’s Tourism 2035, released on 5 August, made “marketing to humans and machines” the first of its four priorities (Tourism Australia⁠ (opens in a new tab)). The other three, breadth of experiences, the major events runway and a distinctive luxury positioning, all depend on regions being easy to read. We argued in Tourism 2035 and marketing to machines that the work lands on regional websites.

In 2027: each quarter, put the same set of visitor questions to the same AI assistants and note which sources they cite.

5. The rules around the website tightened

From 10 December 2026, organisations covered by the Privacy Act that use personal information in automated decisions affecting people must say so in their privacy policies (OAIC⁠ (opens in a new tab)). An exposure draft of a second reform bill, released on 31 August, proposed stricter consent and treating cookie and pixel disclosures as direct marketing (Clayton Utz⁠ (opens in a new tab)). Our privacy checklist covers forms, pixels and “service” emails.

In 2027: audit every tracking pixel on the site, and remove any nobody can explain.

The numbers and the seasons

Two other shifts are worth carrying into planning. Tourism Research Australia’s June-quarter figures showed day-trip spending up 23% on a year earlier while overnight trips dipped (Tourism Research Australia⁠ (opens in a new tab)), which we read for websites in Day-trip spending rose 23%. And the Bureau of Meteorology’s October outlook said El Niño was at near-record levels heading into summer (Bureau of Meteorology⁠ (opens in a new tab)), the reason for our crisis-ready checklist.

There was also a quieter story. Councils are weighing the cost of visitor information centres, and some are closing (ABC News, September 2026⁠ (opens in a new tab)). Wherever that happens, the questions a centre answered at the counter need answers on the website.

What didn’t change

For all the new acronyms, most of what decides a visit is old. Visitors still want to know what is open, how long the drive takes, what is on this weekend and whether it suits their family. Operators still need someone to send them customers. Keeping those basics current, week after week, on pages anyone can read, is still most of the job.

What we would not do in 2027

Don’t buy a promise of AI placement: nobody can make one. Don’t rebuild around a booking engine to compete with the platforms. And don’t put the website’s most important facts in PDFs, widgets and images that assistants can’t read.

On Roam

On every Roam site, AI Discovery is live at no extra cost: AI agents that visit receive clean, structured markdown, and each site maintains an llms.txt file. That makes pages easier for assistants to read; it can’t place a destination in their answers. ATDW products sync automatically. The rest of this list is editorial work, and it belongs to the people who know their region.