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INTEREST CATEGORY: SECTORS
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Posted by: Linda Hollebeek

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Virtual Special Issue (VSI) Call for Papers/Abstracts
Tourism Management

“Fostering Responsible Generative Artificial Intelligence in Tourism”
Submission Deadline: October 30, 2024

Guest Editors:

• Professor Scott McCabe, University of Birmingham, UK
• Professor Xiang (Robert) Li, Temple University, USA
• Dr. Jun Hwa Cheah, University of East Anglia, UK
• Professor Linda D. Hollebeek, Sunway University, Malaysia¹
• Dr. Nisreen Ameen, Royal Holloway University of London, UK
• Professor Rob Law, University of Macau, Macao SAR, China

VSI Motivation and Focus

Generative AI (GAI) is an artificial intelligence sub-type that is able to generate original content, including images, text, audio, and code, by learning from (large) data (Peres et al., 2023; Kim et al., 2023). It, therefore, stands as a ground-breaking technology capable of identifying data patterns and using those patterns to generate new content in response to specific content inputs (e.g., users’ questions). Remarkably, its output mirrors the quality that is typically associated with human experts, yet it is accomplished in a fraction of the time and at a significantly reduced cost, coupled with augmented creativity (Xie-Carson et al., 2023; Berente et al., 2021), thus potentially revolutionizing the creation, consumption, and delivery of tourism services (Li et al., 2023; Yin et al., 2023; Ameen et al., 2023). Specifically, GAI may be leveraged to personalize tourism offerings or their (e.g., marketing) content, among others, in turn boosting their competitiveness, effectiveness, or performance (Law et al., 2023; Yang et al., 2022; Qiang & McCabe, 2021). For example, while Expedia is using GAI to generate personalized travel itineraries for its customers (FastCompany, 2023), KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is using GAI to personalize its marketing campaigns (Diginomica, 2023).

However, despite its promise, GAI also raises potential ethical issues, including in terms of its accountability (e.g., by creating misleading/deceptive content), privacy, fairness, discrimination, or other biases that may impact tourism stakeholders (Xiang et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021). For example, GAI may generate content that inadvertently reinforces prevailing stereotypes, discriminates against specific (e.g., race, gender, or ethnic) demographics based on the data and/or algorithm it has been trained on (Dwivedi et al., 2023; Pazzanese, 2020), in turn exacerbating societal disparities or raising other ethical issues (Kim et al., 2023; Dogru et al., 2023a/b). Moreover, lacking transparency around the informational sources leveraged by GAI may raise concerns regarding the validity of its output (e.g., by questioning the reasoning behind GAI recommendations). For example, GAI may manipulate online hotel/restaurant reviews or mass-create false identity accounts. Consequently, its capacity to create misleading, obsolete, or misconstrued information may trigger the development of negative attitudes to GAI or GAI misconceptions that may adversely influence tourism stakeholders’ GAI-related decision-making, engagement, and/or wellbeing (Hollebeek & Belk, 2021; He et al., 2018).

However, scholarly attention to the dynamics characterizing these potential ethical GAI challenges, and responsible GAI adoption, in tourism lags behind, exposing an important literature-based gap. In other words, scholars require an in-depth understanding of the ethical implications of tourism-based GAI design, adoption, and usage, along with relevant guidelines and best practices for responsible GAI implementation, as, therefore, addressed in this VSI. This VSI thus provides a platform to explore the interface of tourism, GAI, and ethics to boost tourism provider performance.

We invite submissions that explore key hallmarks, drivers, consequences, and/or contingency factors characterizing tourism-based GAI design, adoption, and usage, thus moving the field of tourism management forward by contributing to its theoretical/methodological and practical advancement. We welcome qualitative, quantitative, or pluralistic contributions that make a substantive theoretical contribution and that address issues, including, but not limited to, the following:

• What key ethical challenges characterize tourism-based GAI design, adoption, usage, and engagement and how can these be minimized or resolved?
• What (e.g., security/privacy) measures may be implemented to protect users’ data (e.g., travel preferences or booking details) from unauthorized GAI access and/or misuse?
• What tourism stakeholder roles, skills, and responsibilities are required to secure responsible GAI adoption and usage?
• How can responsible tourism-based GAI design be leveraged to boost specific tourism stakeholders’ (e.g., customers’ or employees’) engagement, trust, co-creation, satisfaction, or wellbeing?
• How can GAI be used to responsibly strengthen tourism stakeholder (e.g., customer) relationships?
• To what extent and how can tourism-based GAI be used to identify and combat tourismrelated mis- or disinformation (e.g., fake reviews)?
• How may GAI be leveraged to raise inclusion, diversity, and equity of specific stakeholders’ (e.g., customers’) tourism experiences (e.g., by making relevant tourismrelated recommendations?
• How should tourism-based GAI be governed (e.g., to minimize the emergence of monopolistic practices, to allow smaller, resource-constrained providers to still flourish)?
• How can GAI be used to support organizational, environmental, social, and governance (E.S.G.), or other responsible (e.g., sustainable) firm objectives?
• What key implications does tourism-based GAI implementation have for tourism policymaking,
• What are the key legal and policymaking implications of tourism-based GAI implementation?
• How will GAI adoption affect tourism scholarship and practice?

Submission Procedure

Interested authors are encouraged to submit a 500-word abstract of their work to Dr Jacky Cheah (email: j.cheah@uea.ac.uk  and Dr Nisreen Ameen (email: nisreen.ameen@rhul.ac.uk  by April 15, 2024, which members of the Guest Editor team will provide feedback on. The final deadline for VSI submissions is October 30, 2024, via the Tourism Management online submission portal:

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Though full manuscripts are to be submitted to the journal on a rolling basis up until the deadline, earlier submissions are encouraged and will be handled as they are received. When submitting your manuscript, please select the VSI: “Responsible GAI in Tourism” from the drop-down menu. Submissions should be prepared in accordance with the editorial policy and author guidelines of Tourism Management, available at:

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The guest editors will screen submissions to ensure their appropriate scope, fit with the journal, (e.g., theoretical) contribution, and relevance to the VSI’s aims and objectives. Manuscripts that do not pass this initial screening will be returned to the authors, while the remaining manuscripts will be reviewed in accordance with Tourism Management’s guidelines and procedures.

Any questions may be directed to the VSI Guest Editors:

Professor Scott McCabe
Professor and Head of Department – Marketing
Birmingham Business School
Email: s.mccabe@bham.ac.uk

Professor Xiang (Robert) Li
Professor and Arthur F. McGonigle Senior Fellow
Director, The U.S.-Asia Center for Tourism & Hospitality Research
School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management
Temple University
Email: robertli@temple.edu

Dr. Jun Hwa Cheah
Associate Professor of Marketing
Norwich Business School
University of East Anglia
Norwich, UK
Email: j.cheah@uea.ac.uk

Professor Linda D. Hollebeek
Professor of Marketing
Sunway University, Vilnius University, Tallinn University of Technology
Umea University, Lund University, and University of Johannesburg
Email: lindah@sunway.edu.my

Dr. Nisreen Ameen
Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of Digital Marketing
School of Business and Management
Royal Holloway University of London
Email: nisreen.ameen@rhul.ac.uk

Professor Rob Law
Asia-Pacific Academy of Economics and Management
Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management
Faculty of Business Administration
University of Macau, Macau SAR, PR China
Email: roblaw@um.edu.mo

References

Ameen, N., Cheah, J., Ali, F., El-Manstrly, D., & Kulyciute, R. (2023a). Risk, trust, and the roles of human versus virtual influencers. Journal of Travel Research, .

Berente, N., Gu, B., Recker, J., & Santhanam, R. (2021). Managing artificial intelligence. MIS Quarterly, 45(3), 1433-1450.

Dogru, T., Line, N., Hanks, L., Acikgoz, F., Abbott, J., Bakir, S., … & Suess, C. (2023a). The implications of generative artificial intelligence in academic research and higher education in tourism and hospitality. Tourism Economics, .

Dogru, T., Line, N., Mody, M., Hanks, L., Abbott, J., Acikgoz, F., Assaf, A., Bakir, S., Berbekova, A., Bilgihan, A., Dalton, A., Erkmen, E., Geronasso, M., Gomez, D., Graves, S., Iskender, A., Ivanov, S., Kizildag, M., Lee, M., … Zhang, T. (2023b). Generative artificial intelligence in the hospitality and tourism industry: Developing a framework for future research. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, .

Diginomica (2023). Dreamforce 2023 – KLM consolidates customer data with Service Cloud, contemplates AI’s potential. Retrieved (7 Dec 2023) at: .

Dwivedi, Y., Kshetri, N., Hughes, L., Slade, E., Jeyaraj, A., Kar, A., … & Wright, R. (2023). So what if ChatGPT wrote it? Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 71, 102642.

FastCompany (2023). Expedia’s Project Explorer uses AI to curate trips based on budget and time of year (exclusive). Retrieved (5 Dec 2023) at:

He, Z., Wu, L., & Li, X. (2018). When art meets tech: The role of augmented reality in enhancing museum experiences and purchase intentions. Tourism Management, 68, 127-139.

Hollebeek, L. & Belk, R. (2021). Consumers’ technology-facilitated brand engagement and wellbeing: Positivist TAM/PERMA- vs. Consumer Culture Theory perspectives. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 38(2), 387-401.

Jiang, Q. & McCabe, S. (2021). Information technology and destination performance: Examining the role of dynamic capabilities. Annals of Tourism Research, 91, 103292.

Kim, J. H., Kim, J., Park, J., Kim, C., Jhang, J., & King, B. (2023). When ChatGPT gives incorrect answers: The impact of inaccurate information by generative AI on tourism decisionmaking. Journal of Travel Research, .

Law, R., Lin, K., Ye, H., & Fong, D. (2023). Artificial intelligence research in hospitality: A stateof-the-art review and future directions. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, .

Li, H., Zhang, L., & Hsu, C. (2023). Research on user-generated photos in tourism and hospitality: A systematic review and way forward. Tourism Management, 96, 104714.

Pazzanese, C. (2020). Ethical concerns mount as AI takes bigger decision-making role in more industries. Harvard Gazette. .

Peres, R., Schreier, M., Schweidel, D., & Sorescu, A. (2023). On ChatGPT and beyond: How generative artificial intelligence may affect research, teaching, and practice. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 40(2), 269-275.

Xiang, Z., Fesenmaier, D., & Werthner, H. (2021). Knowledge creation in information technology and tourism: a critical reflection and an outlook for the future. Journal of Travel Research, 60(6), 1371-1376.

Xie-Carson, L., Magor, T., Benckendorff, P., & Hughes, K. (2023). All hype or the real deal? Investigating user engagement with virtual influencers in tourism. Tourism Management, 99, 104779.

Yang, F. X., Li, Y., Li, X., & Yuan, J. (2022). The beauty premium of tour guides in the customer decision-making process: An AI-based big data analysis. Tourism Management, 93, 104575.

Yin, D., Li, M., & Qiu, H. (2023). Do customers exhibit engagement behaviors in AI environments? The role of psychological benefits and technology readiness. Tourism Management, 97, 104745.

Zhang, Y., Gao, J., Cole, S., & Ricci, P. (2021). How the spread of user-generated contents (UGC) shapes international tourism distribution: Using agent-based modeling to inform strategic UGC marketing. Journal of Travel Research, 60(7), 1469-1491.

¹Additional co-affiliations: Vilnius University, Lithuania; Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia; Umea University, Sweden; Lund University, Sweden; and University of Johannesburg, South Africa.