Your next recommendation isn't human

Something interesting is happening to the things we thought we understood about influence.

AI is changing how brands get discovered, and no amount of media spend will change its mind about who to trust. A famous face isn't enough to guarantee a bottle sells. Australia's big night out is getting earlier, Dubai's homegrown restaurants are looking beyond the Gulf, and in luxury, having nothing planned might be the ultimate status symbol.

This week, we're looking at what's gaining influence, what's losing it, and where things might be heading next.

Grab a drink and let's get into it.

Think about the last time you asked ChatGPT for a recommendation. Maybe it was where to eat, what hotel to book or which skincare product to buy. You probably didn't ask for ten options. You wanted a good answer.

That's a pretty significant shift for brands. Studies of AI answers trace more than 80% of brand mentions back to earned media, and ChatGPT alone had 900 million people a week using it by April. In other words, what other people say about your brand is starting to matter even more than what you say about yourself.

The economics are almost rude. A referral from an LLM converts at close to 16%. An organic search click, under 2%. By the time someone reaches your website through an AI recommendation, a lot of the consideration has already happened.

L'Oréal moved early. At VivaTech in Paris this June, it named OpenAI a "foundational partner," folded Maybelline's virtual try-on into ChatGPT and fed verified product data in for Lancôme and Kérastase. Asia Pacific never needed the memo, a whole generation there already treats TikTok and Xiaohongshu as the search bar. And in the Gulf, where discovery runs through Instagram and increasingly through the assistants, the brands with the richest earned footprint are the ones surfacing in the answer.

So here's the question for anyone still focused on paid impressions: when someone asks AI about your category, what does it know about you? Earned media has always been about building trust. Now it’s helping determining whether you make it into the answer at all.

Picture the shelf: a hundred bottles, a hundred famous faces, all of them promising the same sunset in Jalisco. George Clooney made it look effortless, and half of Hollywood are selling agave. But now, the hangover has arrived right on schedule.

Casamigos volumes fell 19.8% in 2025, to 1.9 million cases. Agave that fetched 30 pesos a kilo in 2021 now goes for as little as 2. Somewhere in Mexico, roughly 500 million litres of unsold tequila sit in tanks, waiting for a party that’s already finished. A famous name might get a product onto the shelf, but what they bought was borrowed relevance and time

📌 Australians go out less and spend more when they do

Frequency is down, intent is up. Nearly half of Australians still go out at least weekly, rising to three-quarters of Gen Z, and the average is six nights a month. But those nights are becoming more considered: closer to home, planned around food and worth spending on. 76% would rather eat out than drink out, while cost remains the biggest barrier at 66%. If people are going out less often, the pressure is on venues to give them a reason to choose you.

📌 Dubai's homegrown restaurants are going global

Homegrown groups are heading outward: Yolk Brands runs across eight MENA markets and is moving into Asia, Pickl has planted roots in Riyadh, and Gulfood 2026 pulled in 8,500 exhibitors from 195 countries. The Gulf spent decades hosting other people's food concepts, took all those learnings and is now exporting its own.

📌 Unscheduled time is the new luxury

For a long time, a great holiday meant having every hour accounted for. Now, the luxury might be having nowhere to be at all. Hotels are responding with slower itineraries, longer stays and more room for guests to decide what they feel like doing when they wake up. When everyday life is already over-scheduled, an empty afternoon starts to feel pretty valuable.

Anyone can announce a new venue. A press release, a launch party and a few social posts are enough to tell people you're open.

The harder part is giving them a reason to care.

The launches that stay in people's minds don't rely on a single moment. They build momentum before the first guest walks through the door, create conversations that last beyond opening night and give media, creators and customers something worth talking about.

A few recent examples.

Motel Mexicola, Uluwatu, Bali - Motel Mexicola had already become an institution for Australian travellers. The challenge wasn't introducing the brand, but introducing its biggest evolution yet. We positioned the Uluwatu opening around Baja California, its produce-led menu and ambitious culinary direction, securing coverage across delicious., Broadsheet, Concrete Playground and their social platforms, helping the venue arrive with credibility long before peak season.

Valentina, Gold Coast, Australia - Rather than launching another restaurant, we introduced one of the Gold Coast's most anticipated openings. We centred the story around Table For, Accor's dedicated F&B group, the all-female leadership team and the collaboration with world-renowned cocktail bar Maybe Sammy. Alongside national and local media coverage, we brought together 25 leading media and creators for an intimate launch dinner, ensuring the conversation extended well beyond opening week.

Loulou, Sydney, Australia - Not every launch needs to be permanent. For Bastille Week, we transformed a one-week activation into a cultural moment, celebrating France's most influential culinary masters through limited-edition pastries and dishes inspired by Paul Bocuse, Maison Troisgros, Joël Robuchon and Bernard Pacaud. The result was a story that felt timely, authentic and worth sharing.

The Char'd Club & Isabella's Italian Street Kitchen, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates - Launching two new concepts in Sharjah meant introducing not only the venues, but helping position the city as an emerging dining destination. Within two months of opening, the venues generated more than 48 pieces of media and social coverage across titles including Hospitality News Middle East, Caterer Middle East, Hotel & Catering News Middle East, Dubai Eye Business Breakfast, FACT and What's On Northern Emirates, establishing momentum from day one.

The lesson is the same every time. Great launches aren't remembered because the doors opened. They're remembered because people had a reason to talk about them.

Coverage follows stories. The opening is just the beginning.

Every one of them came down to the same thing: a story people want to pass on.

If that's what you're wrestling with, hit reply, we read everyone.

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Each month we hand the Culture Diet to someone whose taste we trust. This month it's David Tapley, Editor-in-Chief of FACT Magazine, shaping its food, travel and culture coverage across the UAE, Saudi, Singapore and the UK for the past decade.