Tourism and hospitality marketing is entering an agentic AI and robotic era that is rapidly reshaping how value is designed, communicated, and delivered across the end-to-end customer journey. Generative AI is changing marketing communications and brand storytelling at scale, while data-driven automation is transforming segmentation, targeting, personalization, pricing, and distribution. AI agents are increasingly transforming human-computer interaction by perceiving, reasoning, and taking actions on behalf of human users. At the same time, service robots and embodied interfaces are reconfiguring frontline encounters, influencing customer perceptions of service quality, warmth and competence, authenticity, and relationship strength. As interactions increasingly unfold in hybrid spaces where digital and physical realms converge – phygital and/or metaverse environments – AI-enabled systems become integrated into everyday life in more immersive and relationally nuanced ways. In this context, travel decisions and experiences are increasingly mediated by algorithms rather than solely by firms, employees, or traditional channels.
These shifts create major opportunities for better relevance, speed, efficiency, and consistency, but they also raise foundational questions for tourism and hospitality marketing research and practice. Relevant questions and challenges include:
- How do travellers build trust when information, recommendations, and persuasive messages are generated?
- How are itineraries optimised and delivered by AI systems?
- When does agentic AI personalization feel supportive versus intrusive?
- What shapes perceived fairness, transparency, and legitimacy of algorithmic decisions?
- How are dynamic pricing, prioritization, and service recovery incorporated?
- What is the appropriate human likeness (appearance and competences) for the design of robots in tourism and hospitality?
- What is the importance of anthropomorphism?
- Should AI agents express emotions while interacting with customers?
- How AI emotions cocreate or codestruct value in tourism and hospitality?
- How do AI agents and robots alter responsibility attribution and accountability when service failures occur?
- What does failure mean for complaints, service recovery, and relationship repair?
- How should tourism and hospitality brands govern disclosure, data rights, privacy, bias, while sustaining brand equity and long-term customer relationships?
- What is the impact of agentic AI and robots for accessibility and inclusion?
- How do these technologies influence internal marketing, employee roles, emotional labour, and service climate?
- How can organisations orchestrate effective human–AI–robot configurations that deliver dependable experiences?
- How conflicts between AI agents and humans (e.g. consumers and service employees) should be resolved?
- How do customer readiness and ecosystem readiness influence the agentic AI proliferation?
This themed issue invites rigorous, impactful research that advances theory and practice on tourism and hospitality marketing in the AI and robotic era. We welcome conceptual, empirical, methodological, and review contributions that generate clear implications for tourism and hospitality firms, destinations, and digital intermediaries, and that engage with external forces such as regulation and societal expectations shaping responsible innovation.
List of Topic Areas
We welcome papers on the following (but not limited to) topics related to tourism and hospitality:
- AI-driven segmentation and customer portfolio strategy
- AI SEO and recommendations
- Social listening and reputation management
- Generative AI workflows for brand communications
- Conversational AI
- Agentic AI
- Avatar and service robots in phygital and/or metaverse environments
- Digital customer experience and customer journeys
- Pricing, promotion, and revenue analytics
- Service recovery and customer relationships
- Platforms, distribution, and destinations
- Robotic servicescapes and experiential marketing
- Anthropomorphism and human likeness in the design of robots
- Ascribing emotions to robots
- Human-AI and Robots collaboration and conflict resolution
- Customer lifetime value modelling and membership strategies
- Ethics, governance, and responsible AI.
Submissions Information
Submission information for the 2027 Global Marketing Conference at Tokyo
Follow the instructions at https://2027gmc.imweb.me/20
Submission Deadline: 15th January 2027
Submission information for the thematic issue of Tourism Review
Submissions to the Tourism Review thematic issue are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts.
Authors should include the word AI or/and Robot in their title. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.
Registration and access are available here: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/tr
Submission Deadline: 31st August 2027
Guest Editors
Dimitrios Buhalis
Bournemouth University
dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.uk
Fei Hao
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
ffaye.hao@polyu.edu.hk
Ioannis Assiouras
Lyon Catholic University
iassiouras@univ-catholyon.fr
For more details refer here
