AI bias threatens Kerry tourism economy

Research shows search engines push travellers to same five locations while nearly a quarter of local sites are ignored.

Kerry's tourism industry faces a major digital hurdle as new research reveals artificial intelligence platforms are driving prospective visitors toward a narrow cluster of top-tier sites while ignoring nearly a quarter of the county's attractions.
A comprehensive study by AI performance platform Searchable analysed 2,820 specific travel queries about Kerry across platforms including ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
The findings indicate that 75 per cent of all AI-generated responses repeatedly recommend the exact same five destinations: Killarney National Park, the Ring of Kerry, the Gap of Dunloe, Slea Head Drive, and the Dingle Peninsula.
The National Park features in 88 per cent of all AI responses for the county. Conversely, 59 per cent of Kerry attractions are mentioned in fewer than one in ten answers, and 23 per cent including historical sites such as St Manchan's Oratory and the Tullygarran Ogham Stones, both in West Kerry, are entirely omitted by AI search tools. Even when prospective travellers explicitly query chatbots for "hidden gems" across the county, the same core list of major landmarks appears in 51 per cent of responses.

Shifting search habits

The findings come as consumer habits shift rapidly away from traditional search engine result pages toward AI-driven conversational assistants. Industry estimates show that roughly 10 per cent of prospective holidaymakers are already using AI tools to plan itineraries and map out regional trips.
Local tourism providers, heritage sites, and hospitality businesses face an emerging risk of lost footfall if their digital presence falls outside the limited online reference pools queried by AI tools.
Chris Donnelly, CEO and co-founder of Searchable, explained that the current design of AI platforms inherently favours high-density online sources over local listings.
"AI chatbots are reading a select pool of online sources and turning them into the same repetitive recommendations. Most local businesses won’t be aware of what those sources are, or why they're not being recommended, even for attraction requests that relate to them," Donnelly said.
"That matters for Irish tourism on both the consumer and business side. Although tourism spend is recovering this year, Fáilte Ireland's Quarterly Economic Update in March showed that August to December was the only period in 2025 where overseas visits grew, and these visits make up 60% of all tourist spending. With more travellers deciding where to go using AI, our data shows they're being steered towards the same small group of attractions. Places not included on that list risk missing out on primary footfall until the end of 2026."

How AI drives visits to biggest attrations 

For years, local businesses relied on web searches to get noticed online, competing for clicks on search pages through standard website listings.
AI tools change that pattern completely. Instead of giving users a list of website links to click on, AI tools read online guides and spit out a single, quick answer.
If a local museum, family park, or village tour isn't mentioned regularly in those online guides, the AI simply leaves it out. With foreign visitors bringing in most of our tourism revenue, getting local spots listed on these new systems will be vital for keeping footfall flowing to towns across all of Kerry.