I’m often asked whether AI-assisted reviews are the latest semantic apocalypse for travel. I see it more modestly: they mark the end of a long-standing taboo — the one that quietly turned writing into an unspoken entrance exam.
Let’s be honest: not everyone has the linguistic toolkit to turn an experience into a piece of writing. And no, reading a few motivational LinkedIn posts doesn’t magically make you Hemingway.
This is where a thinker rarely mentioned in tourism suddenly becomes relevant: Wittgenstein.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
If that’s true, then any tool that expands our language also expands our world. A mediated voice is still a voice.
The real danger isn’t mediation. It’s absence. A reputation system built only on confident writers isn’t more authentic — it’s just narrower.
So yes, welcome to the guests who, instead of freezing in front of that intimidating blank review box, let AI act as an interpreter for their experience. This isn’t the death of authenticity. If anything, it widens the field of view. Lazy, perhaps — but wider all the same.
The review becomes a collective artifact, a patchwork of human and machine — something Cronenberg-like, Ballardian.
As for me, I’ll take a mediated truth over a silent one any day.
Because silence doesn’t build reputation.
Until next week,
Simone
SIMONE PUORTO
