Tourists traveled to Australia for its famous hot springs. There was just one problem – they didn’t exist
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Publish Date: 2026-01-31 07:43:00
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Women exploring the wild beauty of Tasmania, Australia. – pixdeluxe/E+/Getty Images
This week in travel news: Australian travelers descended on an imaginary tourist attraction, a woman recalls the night she unexpectedly bunked with a pair of traveling nuns, and the turning point for REAL ID has arrived.
Getting into hot water
Hundreds of tourists are flocking to hot springs in a small town in Tasmania, Australia. However, there was one small wrinkle in their trip planning. The hot springs are actually an AI “hallucination” that erroneously appeared on a travel advice website and was widely shared before people figured out what was happening.
While this particular anecdote is funny, it speaks to a larger, more alarming trend in the travel industry.
Anne Hardy, adjunct professor in tourism at Southern Cross University, Australia, told CNN that about 37% of tourists use artificial intelligence-powered large language models like ChatGPT for travel advice or itineraries.
Are you thinking about using AI to plan your next vacation, but not sure how to tell what’s real and what’s fake? Five CNN Travel staffers in five different cities tried to follow AI-created itineraries in their own hometowns, with varying degrees of success. Follow their experiences – and learn from their mistakes – here.
‘Sister Act,’ travel edition
“Great Escapes” is a new CNN Travel series about how journeys sometimes don’t go as planned — and what happens next. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you the first three articles in the series, which are also available in audio form.
This week’s story is about Diann Droste, who in 1973 was a 16-year-old high schooler traveling around the US by Greyhound bus when a massive snowstorm threatened to strand her alone in a small town in Minnesota.
Luckily, though, Diann wasn’t alone. Two guardian angels emerged – in the form of nuns. The two women saw broke, scared Diann alone in the lobby of a motel and invited her to stay…
