Two years ago, a traveler planning a getaway would open Google, compare ten websites and decide. Today they open ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity and ask a question in plain language: "what are the prettiest villages in the Comunitat Valenciana?", "where should I go with kids in summer?", "Costa Blanca or Costa Brava?" The AI doesn't return a list for the user to browse: it returns a closed answer with two, three or five destinations. Everything else simply doesn't exist in that conversation.

That discipline — measuring and managing how a brand appears inside generative AI answers — is now known as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), the equivalent of SEO for the assistant era. The Autoritas Tourism Reputation Barometer for the Comunitat Valenciana is the first systematic measurement of how these seven AIs treat the region and its main destinations, with data closed as of June 30, 2026.

"Today a trip is no longer planned on Google: it's planned on ChatGPT or Gemini. AI isn't a search engine, it's a recommender. If your destination doesn't appear in its answer, it doesn't exist for that traveler. And for the first time we have a way to measure it" — Mireia Llinares, spokesperson for Autoritas Consulting.

Technical profile of the first release

What we measured, on whom, and how

  • Period: June 2026 (closed as of June 30).
  • Brands in the panel: 17 — the Comunitat Valenciana as the main brand, plus 16 tourist destinations (Alicante, Altea, Benidorm, Calpe, Castellón de la Plana, Cullera, Dénia, Elche, Gandía, Xàbia, Morella, Peñíscola, Requena-Utiel, Valencia, Vinaròs and Xàtiva).
  • Questions evaluated: 22, grouped into four blocks — general discovery, beach and coast, heritage and inland, and specific getaways and plans.
  • Engines evaluated: 7 — ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini), Claude (claude-haiku-4.5), DeepSeek (deepseek-chat-v3.1), Gemini (gemini-2.5-flash), Grok (grok-4.20), Mistral (mistral-small-3.2-24b-instruct) and Perplexity (sonar).
  • Main indicator: GPS (Generative Presence Score), from 0 to 100, integrating a brand's coverage, position and prominence within the answer.

Finding 1 · The Comunitat Valenciana scores 77.6 out of 100

The Comunitat Valenciana's aggregate GPS across the seven AIs is 77.6 points out of 100: a solid B. The AIs recognize the region as a tourist destination, place it within the answer for most of the 22 questions, and do so with reasonable prominence. There's room to grow toward excellence, but the starting point is solid — and the indicator is reactive: every piece of quality digital content about a destination ends up being absorbed by the models in subsequent training or retrieval windows. The gap between the current 77.6 and an optimal scenario of 90+ points is entirely achievable with a coordinated digital presence strategy.

The score still translates into three concrete areas for improvement: incomplete prescription in questions where the region should be a natural answer, room to improve in ranking when it does appear (not always in first position), and a loss of nuance — the AI tends to reduce the territory to Valencia, Benidorm and paella, losing the real diversity of the region.

Finding 2 · Gemini leads, but all seven AIs treat us well

The breakdown by engine is one of the best pieces of news in the report: all seven AIs place the Comunitat Valenciana above 72 points, with no significant gaps in any model. The total range — 17 points between the top and bottom engine — is narrow, meaning generative prescription doesn't depend on which AI the traveler happens to ask.

  1. Gemini — 89.1 (20/22 questions, 91% presence). It's the default AI on Android: being the one that treats the region best puts natural prescription in hundreds of millions of phones.
  2. Perplexity — 81.4 (19/22, 86%). It bases its answers on real-time web grounding: a clear signal that the region's recent digital footprint is being picked up.
  3. DeepSeek — 81.0 (17/21, 81%). Same real-time search logic as Perplexity, same result.
  4. Mistral — 76.1 (19/22, 86%) and ChatGPT — 74.1 (18/22, 82%). Good level, no surprises.
  5. Claude — 72.7 and Grok — 72.7 (16/22, 73% each). The two AIs that might raise the most doubts — the European one based in Paris and the one built into X — place us practically at the same level as ChatGPT and Claude.

Finding 3 · Valencia leads; Morella and Peñíscola share the podium

The ranking of the panel's 16 destinations offers several readings worth taking slowly:

  1. Valencia (54.4) in the lead, the only brand above 50. It's the strongest in the region, though in some of the questions where the Comunitat Valenciana does appear, Valencia isn't named explicitly: there's room to grow.
  2. Morella (31.0) and Peñíscola (30.5), practically tied, ahead of Altea (26.1) and Benidorm (23.1). The AI has absorbed a clear identity for both — a single phrase, a single concept — and returns it consistently: a textbook case of how a small destination can compete with the big ones on generative ground.
  3. Xàtiva keeps climbing (22.7), already on par with Castellón (22.5) and Benidorm (23.1). An inland destination with a heritage profile competing with established coastal ones.
  4. The Costa Blanca performs well: Altea (26.1), Xàbia (21.4), Dénia (21.1) and Benidorm (23.1) are all above average, with recognizable branding and visual narrative.
  5. The tail needs a plan: Vinaròs (1.8), Cullera (7.1) and Gandía (9.2) fall clearly short of the tourism weight they actually carry outside of AI.

Finding 4 · Ten emerging destinations are already winning the conversation

One of the most useful functions of the GEO module is detecting which destinations the AI cites on its own initiative, without being asked about them explicitly. Beyond the panel's 17 initial brands, there's a whole group of destinations entering the conversation with force — and not by chance: they're doing their digital presence homework well.

What the unprompted mentions tell us

  • L'Albufera leads with 81 mentions. A natural park, not a city: the AI is also selling an experience of territory, not just administrative labels.
  • Bocairent (69) and Guadalest (54) compete with Valencia city in raw mentions. Two inland villages with strongly marked identity, viral photos and a well-established postcard-village narrative.
  • Sagunto, Chulilla, Vilafamés, Sierra de Espadán and Alcoy round out the group: Roman heritage, canyoning, the village named "the prettiest in Spain," a nature park and industrial modernism. Five distinct hooks, each with its own identity, that the AI recognizes and returns regularly.

These ten destinations will be added to the Barometer's main tracking panel in the next release.

Finding 5 · Presence in AI is manageable, not random

The most important conclusion of the first Barometer is counterintuitive: the destinations that appear best in AI aren't the ones that spend the most on advertising, or even necessarily the most visited. They're the ones that have actively worked on their digital footprint. Morella, Bocairent or Guadalest show that three conditions are enough to gain generative weight:

  1. A clear, repeatable identity: a single phrase a human and an algorithm can both memorize.
  2. A sustained volume of third-party digital content — media, blogs, reviews, social media — that validates that identity.
  3. The ability to stay updated: the digital footprint has to be fresh and consistent over time.

The opposite is also true: destinations that share landscape and offering with Morella but haven't tended to their digital footprint appear far less often. The difference isn't the destination, it's the management.

If you manage institutional tourism and want to know how your destination appears in ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity right now, we can analyze it.

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About the study

The Autoritas Tourism Reputation Barometer for the Comunitat Valenciana is a free quarterly report produced by Autoritas Consulting. It combines proprietary digital data capture sources (Google Maps listings, autocomplete, trends, "people also ask," SERP, Clippea) with generative engine presence analysis, and is aligned with Turisme Comunitat Valenciana's strategic plan through the Autoritas VISTA methodology. Future releases will add quarter-over-quarter comparisons and the ten emerging destinations detected in this first release.

Anyone who wants to check the full detail — all 22 questions and the literal answers from each of the seven AIs — can do so in the complete study dossier:

View the complete Barometer dossier (in Spanish)

Conclusion

The first Autoritas Barometer confirms that the Comunitat Valenciana starts from a solid position in the generative conversation — 77.6 out of 100, with no blind spots between engines — but with clear room to grow toward excellence. The difference between the destinations that lead and those that lag isn't in the promotion budget: it's in whether they've worked, or not, on their digital footprint with the consistency AI now demands. And that, precisely, is a management decision within reach of any destination on the panel.