"Best things to do near me" is how you get the tourist list

You asked what to do nearby and got the famous sights you already saw on every guide. The assistant did not ignore you — it answered a vague question with the names that already dominate travel guides and review sites.

17 September 2026

Vague asks leave room for defaults

How AI chatbots build a shortlist already names constraint fit as one input: options that clearly match what you typed tend to stay, and the rest get dropped.

When the ask is only “best things to do near me” or “things to see,” the assistant still has to pick a few options. It leans on what repeats across guides, Maps, and reviews — the same corroboration factor that helps famous beaches beat quieter ones.

Joseph Mellors, a tourism researcher at the University of Westminster, analysed ChatGPT travel suggestions and found the model gravitates toward the most visited destinations by default. Lesser-known or more sustainable places tended to appear only when travellers explicitly asked for them, as he wrote in The Conversation. The peer-reviewed paper behind that piece is ChatGPT and the tourist trail in Current Issues in Tourism (2025).

Those broad asks work the same way at city scale. “Near me” does not tell the system whether you want a quiet neighbourhood, something indoors, a Monday morning slot, or to skip the old town.

A neighbourhood walk or a short stop on this drive is a different ask. “Two hours on foot in this district, not the postcard sights” names a kind of day. “Best things to do near me” does not, and that is how you get the tourist list.

What changes the answer

You do not need a special prompt template. You need to give the assistant the same context you would give a friend.

Say whether you care about quiet, hours, price, wheelchair access, or avoiding the old town. Say which city if you are planning ahead rather than standing on a street corner. If you are driving, say the route. For travel, Mellors notes that off-peak timing can shift suggestions because peak-season content dominates what the model has seen.

That is not a guarantee of a perfect list. It is how you move from “famous by default” toward “fits what I actually said.”

If you are the person asking

Treat a three-name tourist list as a signal about the ask, not only about the tool. Before you trust the hours or the “must visit” tone, open Maps or the venue’s own site for today’s facts.

If you run the place

You cannot win a generic “best things to do” ask on merit alone if corroboration and retrieval still favour the names everyone already repeats. Clarity beats slogans: say on your public listings what you actually offer — “90-minute guided walk,” “indoors, good in rain,” “best for ages eight and up,” “east side, not the castle hill” — so a constrained ask has something to match.