There’s one word travellers are going to hear a lot this year

Young women sitting under trees writing in their daily journals; emerging from swimming pools, trim and tanned in skimpy bikinis; cuddling up with their cavoodle by the fireplace, reading the latest winner of the Miles Franklin prize. (For some reason, they are always wearing bush hats, even inside.)

Personal posts of happy families as perfect as any family in a 1950s Ovaltine advertisement. Or celebs “keeping it real” by looking like they’re not wearing make-up in selfies.

Sometimes it’s not authentic at all, but a performance (it takes a lot of make-up to achieve the no-make-up look).

“Clearly a desirable quality, authenticity is hard to define and subject to debate,” Merriam-Webster says. That hasn’t stopped everyone wanting to have it.

In travel, it’s a runaway concept.

A few weeks ago, I attended the International Luxury Travel Market in Cannes, France. It’s a 22-year-old annual showcase where large and independent hotel brands, tourist authorities, destination managers and tour groups promote their products to travel agents and media. This year there were 2200 exhibitors making 82,000 appointments.

I doubt there were many meetings where the word “authentic” didn’t have a place in the conversation. I sat through dozens of presentations from travel brands and the word was so common, I underscored it in my notebook every time it arose. My book is full of lines.

Travel brands are responding to feedback that travellers want genuine things and first-hand experiences, whether it’s staying in a heritage hotel that’s kept many of the original furnishings and long-time staff, or the intimacy of spending time sitting in the red dirt with a group of Indigenous mothers and yarning about their kids.

“Authentic” in travel suggests a deep dive into an experience, that you won’t just be touching the surface. It suggests something time-honoured and valuable.

Authenticity is about sensory experiences other than sight – the smell of a place, its music, its food and tastes. It’s also about knowledge, learning something true. And genuine interpersonal exchanges with strangers.

It’s also about trust.

The trust that AI can’t provide.

There are a lot of fakes around, especially the “deep fakes” generated by AI. It’s affecting all parts of our life, alarmingly quickly. On social media, I’ve seen hotels built by AI and photos of incredible landscapes out of the windows of non-existent hotel rooms.

Meanwhile, virtual reality is being touted as an immersive substitute for real-life experiences.

It’s natural there’s a push-back against that. A yearning for times when everything wasn’t marketed and packaged. The search for a meaningful life is fundamental and it has accelerated when there’s so much superficiality. Superficiality can be fun, of course, but who wants Cheezels all the time?

But I wonder if “authentic” is going to become as meaningless a word as “luxury”, which has been flagrantly overused in recent times, from the “luxury” of linen sheets to truly palatial penthouse suites. As a descriptor, it’s pretty useless now.

“Authentic” is heading this way if it becomes just another marketing word. It would be a shame if an “authentic experience” referred to everything.

Come on everyone, keep it real.