AI Shortlist · Edition 1, 2027 travel year

California, USA in AI travel recommendations

US state · overall rank 7 of 233 · rank 1 among US state destinations

AI models put California, USA in their top 10 recommendations in 27.6% of answers, rank 7 overall. It does best when the question specifies travel style as relaxation: 64.2%, +36.7 points against its overall score. With web search on, it scores +0.3 points against web search off.

The score is the share of answers that recommend California, USA in their top 10, averaged model by model and then platform by platform, so each platform counts equally.

This destination in the other indexes: Source Control · Itinerary Share

By platform

Platform	Score
Claude	23.7%
ChatGPT	28.2%
Gemini	25.8%
Grok	32.5%

By model

Model	Score
Claude Opus 5	22.2%
Claude Sonnet 5	23.8%
Claude Haiku 4.5	25.0%
GPT-5.6 Terra	32.1%
GPT-5.6 Luna	24.2%
Gemini 3.8 Flash	25.8%
Grok 4.6	32.5%

Web search and effort

California, USA · Edition 1, 2027 travel year

Unit: Shortlist score, percent of answers

California, USA with web search on and off, and at each model's lowest and normal effort setting.

Show as table

Setting	Search on / normal effort	Search off / lowest effort
Web search on vs off	27.7%	27.4%
Normal vs lowest effort	28.6%	26.5%

The baseline question, "Where should I go in 2027?", was asked 5 times of each model at each setting. California, USA made the top 10 at least once for 2 of those 28 model-and-setting combinations, and where it did, it came back in 20.0% of the repeats on average.

By kind of question

How much higher or lower the score is on questions that ask for each option, in percentage points against the overall score. Outlined cells are below the overall score.

Travel style

Unit: percentage points versus overall score
	Relaxation	Workcation	Cultural	Exotic	Adventure
Change	+36.7	+0.6	−11.3	−12.8	−15.6

Climate

Unit: percentage points versus overall score
	Low Rain	Mild Weather	Cool Weather	Warm Weather
Change	+34.6	+16.6	−0.9	−19.2

Transport

Unit: percentage points versus overall score
	Road trip	At most two connections	Requires a flight	Nonstop, 6–8 hours
Change	+25.4	+12.6	+0.4	−22.2

Trip length

Unit: percentage points versus overall score
	Weekend	One week	Two weeks
Change	+22.8	−1.2	−1.6

Travel party

Unit: percentage points versus overall score
	Family	Solo	Couple
Change	+20.4	−4.5	−10.7

Season

Unit: percentage points versus overall score
	Spring	Summer	Winter	Fall
Change	+16.4	+5.8	−2.9	−5.0

How it's asked

Unit: percentage points versus overall score
	Where should I go?	The plain question	Overrated
Change	+3.2	−25.1	−27.6

How the models wrote the name

Name	Mentions
San Diego	200
Palm Springs	109
Napa Valley	100
San Francisco	71
Santa Barbara	58
Death Valley National Park	34
Big Sur	33
Lake Tahoe	32
Yosemite National Park	31
Pacific Coast Highway	27
Joshua Tree National Park	20
Los Angeles	18
Carmel-by-the-Sea	13
Monterey	13
California	12

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