Collaboration · TPO
Working with TPO on good tourism and AI readiness.
AIR APAC and the Tourism Promotion Organization for Global Cities (TPO) signed a cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU) in April 2026. This page explains what TPO does, the idea of good tourism behind its work, and the part AIR APAC plays in it.
About TPO
A network of cities that learn from each other.
TPO is a multilateral, member-based intergovernmental organisation for urban tourism. Its members are city governments. It is a UN Tourism affiliate member.
TPO helps its member cities learn from each other and build the skills their tourism teams need. Its current work asks a harder question than how many visitors a city receives. It asks whether tourism makes the city a better place to live.
TPO's Good Tourism framework
From more tourism to better cities.
TPO describes five stages in how cities have thought about tourism. Each stage is defined by the main question it asks.
- Tourism 1.0, More tourism: “How many visitors?”
- Tourism 2.0, Experience: “How good was the visit?”
- Tourism 3.0, Sustainability: “How can tourism do less harm?”
- Tourism 4.0, Intelligence: “How can tourism become smarter?”
- Tourism 5.0, Good tourism: “How can tourism make the city better?”
Good tourism, the fifth stage, judges tourism by what it leaves behind. TPO names five kinds of value.
- Visitor value: What value stayed with the traveller, beyond satisfaction?
- Resident value: Did tourism make life better for the people who live in the city?
- Local value: How much of the value from tourism stayed in the local economy?
- Planetary value: What did tourism leave for nature and the climate?
- Future value: What did tourism build up for the next generation?
This is AIR APAC's short summary of TPO's framework. TPO presents the five stages as a way to explain how thinking about tourism has changed. They are not an official international classification.
T-TAC
Where AIR APAC works with TPO.
TPO's framework has five parts:
- Why: Good Tourism
- What to measure: Good Tourism Index
- How to understand: T-TAC
- How to act: Destination stewardship
- How to scale: TPO collective intelligence
T-TAC, the Tourism-Transformation AI Center, is the part that helps a city understand its position. It covers AI visibility, data, destination intelligence, and policy learning. T-TAC is the project AIR APAC works on with TPO.
AI visibility means how a city appears when a traveller asks an AI assistant, such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, where to go and what to do. A city's tourism office cannot see these answers unless someone checks them.
The work in 2026
What we do with member cities.
In 2026, AIR APAC is working with a group of TPO member cities in Asia Pacific. The work has three parts.
- AI readiness. We asked AI assistants the same general travel questions a visitor might ask, without naming any city in the question. We then recorded whether each city appeared and which sources the answer relied on. The questions and counting rules were fixed before any answers were collected.
- Good tourism. Being visible to AI is useful only if it serves the city. We compared what AI assistants say about each city with what the city wants to be known for. In TPO's terms, the aim is tourism that leaves value for residents, the local economy, and the future, not only more visitors.
- Private policy consultations. Around the TPO Forum in September 2026, each participating city was offered a private session with AIR APAC to review its own findings and agree its next steps. The city decides what to do. AIR APAC does not decide for it.
Confidentiality
Each city's results belong to that city.
We do not publish which cities take part. Each city receives only its own results. We do not publish city scores, rankings, or league tables, and we do not compare named cities in public. A city's finding becomes public only if that city gives separate written consent.
This collaboration is research and capacity building. It is not a certification of any city or organisation, and it produces no AIRS-J/1 result. Working with AIR APAC does not affect any certification decision. Read our independence rules.
Next step
For TPO member cities.
If your city is a TPO member and wants to understand how AI assistants present it to travellers, speak to your TPO contact or contact AIR APAC. You can also read how we measure places.