Issue 01 · Information Gain
Travel to Hotel
The 2026 Travel Utility
Proprietary index · 2026 edition

Authenticity Index 2026

Signal-to-tourist-trap ratio, across 87 cities. We read 2.3 million reviews.

87
Cities scored
Population > 150k, tourist reviews > 10k.
2.3M
Reviews analysed
Public, deduplicated, dated.
82%
Inter-rater agreement
Against a manual sample of 1,500 reviews.

Top-3 authenticity (2026)

Kyoto · Lisbon · Fez. Kyoto's score reflects the Gion Corporation's enforcement against selfie-tourism — measurable in review sentiment shift after Oct 2024.

Bottom-3

Venice · Dubrovnik · Santorini. All three now score below 0.3, meaning tourist-trap n-grams outweigh authenticity mentions 3:1.

Surprises

Marrakech scored higher than expected (0.68). Despite widespread QR scams (see /scams), review sentiment around the souks remains strongly authentic.