ABSTRACT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the tourism industry by enhancing efficiency, personalization, sustainability, and innovation across all aspects of travel and hospitality. This chapter reviews the current research on AI applications in tourism through a bibliometric analysis of 534 articles from the Scopus database. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the current research on AI adoption within the tourism and hospitality sector. Key findings show that AI is transforming the tourism industry in multiple ways. The key AI applications identified through the analysis include sentiment analysis of social media data, Chatbots and virtual assistants for customer service, augmented/virtual reality for destination previews, AI for administrative tasks like bookings and personalized recommendations, and robotics for sustainability. The co-word analysis highlights five main topics – AI and tourism digital transformation, big data analytics, blockchain, robotics, and using AI for positive tourist behavior change. The chapter summarizes the opportunities presented by these AI applications, such as improving efficiency and sustainability, enhancing personalization, and gleaning insights from big data. It concludes that while adoption is still early, AI is accelerating innovation across all aspects of tourism. This review provides valuable insights for tourism stakeholders on harnessing AI strategically.
