Determ: AI travel answers cite Facebook, YouTube over tourism sites
Determ, a Zagreb-based media-monitoring company, tested 556 AI responses to 12 seaside-holiday questions asked from a simulated UK user’s perspective across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews between October 1 and 16, 2026, per Determ and Croatia Week. Croatia appeared in 67% of answers overall — 80% on ChatGPT, 67% on Gemini, 53% on AI Overviews — trailing Spain (71%), Greece and Italy (70% each) but ahead of Portugal, Montenegro and Turkey. Of more than 3,000 citations drawn from 628 sites, Facebook (143), YouTube (100) and Instagram (83) led; Croatia’s official tourism site, croatia.hr, did not rank among the 50 most-cited sources, while Spain’s and Greece’s official sites did.
Why it matters: It's a concrete instance of a citation gap this record has tracked elsewhere — UGC and social platforms outcrowding brand-owned domains in AI answers — applied here to a destination whose own site earns none of the citation traffic despite ranking fourth in recommendation share.
The record: ChatGPTGeminiGoogle AI Overviews
Glossary: AI Overviews
Via Croatia Week ↗ · Determ ↗
Posted to the wire October 21, 2026. Edited by Joe Balewski.