Tourists Travel to Cancelled Romanian Festival After False Online Listings and Incorrect ChatGPT Answers

More than ten coaches carrying tourists arrived in Jurilovca, a village in Romania’s Tulcea County, for the Lipovan Borscht Festival, although the event was not organised in 2026. Numerous other visitors travelled to the area in private cars, expecting to attend the annual food and cultural festival.

Jurilovca Mayor Eugen Ion said the tourists had relied on information promoted by tourism agencies on social media and, in some cases, on answers generated by ChatGPT. The available evidence does not indicate that artificial intelligence was the sole cause of the incident, as false festival dates had already circulated online through commercial travel offers.

Tourism Agencies Advertised an Event That Was Not Taking Place

According to the mayor, tourism agencies began promoting trips to the Lipovan Borscht Festival at the beginning of the summer. The advertisements mentioned different dates, including weekends in late August and September.

Eugen Ion said that none of the agencies contacted Jurilovca Town Hall, the organiser of the festival, to verify whether the 2026 edition would take place or to request an official date.

Local authorities reportedly contacted some of the agencies and asked them to remove the misleading offers. Despite those efforts, coaches and private cars continued to arrive in Jurilovca during the weekend.

The mayor described using the festival’s name to sell trips without confirmation from the organiser as deceptive. He also stressed that an event of this scale would have been officially announced by the local administration if it had been scheduled.

ChatGPT Reportedly Confirmed the False Information

When officials asked tourists where they had obtained the information, many said they had seen social media posts and tourism advertisements. Others said they had asked ChatGPT whether the festival was taking place and received an affirmative answer.

The local administration subsequently tested the platform. According to Eugen Ion, ChatGPT incorrectly indicated that the festival would take place on September 4 and 5.

The exact prompts, model version and conversation settings used in those interactions have not been made public. It is therefore impossible to determine whether the platform generated the dates independently, relied on outdated online information or interpreted misleading content already circulating on the internet.

The case nevertheless illustrates a recognised limitation of generative artificial intelligence: language models can produce plausible and confident answers that are factually incorrect. These errors are commonly described as AI hallucinations.

GEO Specialists Explain Why Authoritative Information Matters

According to the AI and GEO specialists at TUYA Digital, Generative Engine Optimisation focuses on making online content sufficiently clear, authoritative and well-structured to be understood and used by AI-powered engines.

TUYA Digital’s specialists identify authority, clear content structure, supporting data and credible citations as important elements in GEO. They also recommend keeping information current and consistent across relevant online sources.

Applied to public events, these principles mean that organisers should publish explicit information about confirmations, cancellations and date changes on clearly identifiable official pages. The same information should be presented consistently and supported by authoritative sources that generative engines can recognise.

However, GEO cannot guarantee that an AI platform will always return an accurate answer. Language models may still use outdated information, misinterpret sources or generate unsupported details. Official communication and human verification therefore remain necessary.

Responsibility Extends Beyond the AI Platform

The incident cannot be attributed exclusively to ChatGPT. Tourism agencies reportedly advertised trips without confirming the event with its organiser, while travellers relied on social media posts and AI-generated answers without checking the official source.

For agencies selling travel packages, verifying an event’s existence, date, and location is a basic commercial responsibility. An AI response should not be treated as sufficient confirmation for an offer involving transport bookings and customer payments.

Travellers should also check the organiser’s website, official social media accounts or the relevant public authority before paying for a trip connected to a specific event.

In this case, a direct confirmation from Jurilovca Town Hall would have established that the 2026 edition of the Lipovan Borscht Festival was not taking place.