Beware, Travelers: AI-Generated Fake Destinations Are Luring Tourists Into Digital Traps

Scammers are weaponizing generative AI to create photorealistic—but entirely fictional—vacation hotspots. Here's how to spot the fakes before you book.

The Rise of Phantom Paradises

Deepfake tourism exploded in 2024, with fake Maldives resorts and AI-generated Swiss Alps chalets tricking over $200M from travelers according to Interpol. The scams leverage Midjourney-level photorealism paired with fake Tripadvisor clones—a cocktail potent enough to bypass even savvy travelers' skepticism.

Red Flags That Scream 'AI'

Watch for impossible geography (snow-capped Caribbean beaches), inconsistent shadows in promo photos, and reviews that read like ChatGPT on autopilot. Bonus tip: if the 'luxury resort' accepts payment in crypto but not credit cards, it's either a scam—or a Silicon Valley VC's passion project.

While blockchain evangelists promise Web3 will solve this with 'verified location NFTs,' today's tourists are stuck with old-school defenses: reverse image searches, calling local tourism boards, and remembering that if a deal looks too good to be true—especially in this economy—it's probably rendering in 4K somewhere.

AI is making people believe fake videos

According to the hotel worker they asked, the elderly Malaysian woman had stumbled on the video on TikTok, alerting her husband to the location. Both of them had been impressed by the views and were going to try it out. The video was so convincing that the TV host rode in the tram and interviewed happy tourists. However, what they failed to catch was the Veo3 logo at the bottom right corner of the video, showing that the video was made with the tool.

While the confusion remains laughable, it shows another harmful part of artificial intelligence. This incident did not require criminals or scammers trying to goad them into paying to visit a dream destination or sending them a false LINK to register to visit the destination, but it still shows how easy it is for malicious actors to carry out illicit activities with such videos.

AI has made it hard to spot the difference between real events and fake ones. It has made even the slightest activity like planning a vacation something that people need to be watchful about. This Malaysian couple’s experience might look like an isolated incident, but it also shows that we need to start questioning our trust in things that we see, hear, or experience in a world where AI can manufacture anything with ease and terrifying precision.

The artificial intelligence blackhole continues to grow

The numbers also back the perspective of the collective descent into digital deception. For instance, deepfake attacks have risen from about 0.1% of all fraud attempts three years ago to about 6.5% today, a big 2,137% jump that represents one in every 15 fraud cases, as indicated by identity services company Signicat in its February 2025 report.

The statistics are not just numbers, as they have real victims behind them. A typical example is Steve Beauchamp, an 82-year-old retiree who withdrew the entire $690,000 in his retirement fund after watching deepfake videos of Elon Musk promoting an investment scheme. “I mean, the picture of him—it was him,” Beauchamp told The New York Times. After the unfortunate incident, his life savings vanished into the digital void.

The scope of AI-powered deception has also touched every aspect of the human experience. British engineering company Arup lost more than $25 million after one of its employees was tricked during a video conference call featuring a deepfake of the company’s CFO and other staff members. A school principal also received death threats after an AI-manipulated video showed him making racist and antisemitic remarks. It was later discovered that his athletics director made the video to discredit him.

Tourism was already DEEP in manufactured reality before AI perfected the art of deception. Social media has changed travel into selfie tourism as most visitors go to holiday-worthy destinations just to take the best shots for Instagram. UNESCO also declared a three-alarm fire on this, warning that travelers are now visiting iconic landmarks to “primarily take and share photos of themselves, often with iconic landmarks in the background.”

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