A Texas Hill Country vacation rental company is betting that the future of tourism begins with artificial intelligence, and it has chosen Bandera as the starting point.
Backroads Hill Country announced June 2 the launch of HillCountry.ai, a new AI-powered travel discovery network designed to help visitors find lodging, restaurants, attractions and local businesses throughout the region. The first town-specific site in the network, Bandera.ai, is now live and centered on the Cowboy Capital of the World.
The project is the latest effort by the Pipe Creekbased company, which has managed vacation rentals in the Hill Country since 2001. Company owner Spencer Forrest said the idea grew out of decades of helping visitors navigate the region.
'Most travelers planning a Hill Country trip end up patching together information from a half-dozen websites, none of which actually know the area,' Forrest said in a statement. 'We've spent 25 years answering these questions by phone. HillCountry.ai is what happens when you put that knowledge into a system that scales.'
Bandera was selected as the first launch location because of its strong tourism identity and Backroads Hill Country's extensive presence in the area.
According to the company, it currently manages 47 properties in Bandera County and has developed relationships with local businesses and tourism partners over the past 25 years.
The new platform features a conversational AI guide named 'Brody' that allows users to ask questions in plain language, such as where to find barbecue, what events are happening during a particular weekend, or where to rent a cabin large enough for a family gathering. The system then generates recommendations based on information compiled by the company.
According to Backroads Hill Country, the AI guides are built using Anthropic's Claude language models and draw from a proprietary database of more than 500 verified businesses across 13 Hill Country communities.
Company officials said listings were manually researched and cross-referenced using sources including Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and local information.
Bandera.ai launched with a directory of 62 verified Bandera-area businesses across 11 categories, as well as information on 47 vacation rental properties managed by Backroads Hill Country.
The site is also connected to the company's Hill-Country mobile application, which covers approximately 40 communities throughout the region.
The broader HillCountry. ai project consists of more than 100 internet domains organized around towns, rivers, parks, attractions and destinations throughout the Hill Country.
Town-specific sites are planned for communities including Fredericksburg, Kerrville, Boerne, Concan, Leakey, Wimberley, Gruene, Lago Vista, Luckenbach and Marble Falls. Additional launches are expected on a weekly basis in the coming months.
Forrest said the project is intended to address changes in how travelers search for information online.
'More travelers now start trip planning by asking an AI assistant rather than a search engine,' the company said in its announcement. 'The local knowledge comes first; the structure is just what makes it legible to the systems doing the answering.'
According to the company, early testing has shown AI search platforms such as Perplexity citing information from HillCountry. ai when responding to travel-related questions about the region. Company officials view that trend as evidence that businesses increasingly need information structured in ways that artificial intelligence systems can access and understand.
The Texas Hill Country attracts an estimated 5 million visitors each year, and Backroads executives believe a growing percentage of those travelers will rely on AI tools to plan trips, select accommodations and choose destinations.
Under the platform's model, businesses can be listed without charge and may appear in AI-generated recommendations to one business per category within each town.
The launch also represents a significant expansion of Backroads Hill Country's operations beyond vacation rentals.
The company currently manages 86 properties across 13 Hill Country communities and maintains a regional travel website, backroadstexas.net, which has published tourism-related content since 2001.
The company reports a 4.9-star average rating across more than 380 Google reviews.
Forrest said the goal is not simply to capitalize on the growing interest in artificial intelligence but to make local businesses easier for travelers to discover.
'We didn't build this to chase a tech trend,' Forrest said. 'We built it because we've watched Hill Country travelers for 25 years struggle to find what they actually want — and watched great local businesses get buried under generic results.'
Bandera.ai and HillCountry. ai are currently available online, while the HillCountry mobile app is available for both iOS and Android devices.
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