Will AI help improve the sustainability of travel and tourism?

Abstract

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the tourism sector is continuously growing, being applied to address various challenges and drive improvements within industry companies. At the same time, sustainability has become one of the key drivers in tourism. Adopting a literature review approach, this contribution examines 115 documents, including research articles and reports developed by professional organizations, to analyze, from both a theoretical and practical perspective, whether AI is currently helping and will help improve the sustainability of the tourism sector. It is common to find proposals assuming that the use of AI in tourism will contribute to enhancing its sustainability. But is it possible to identify pathways that connect AI use with improvements in tourism sector sustainability? Is there practical and real evidence demonstrating this relationship between AI and sustainability, or is it sometimes used merely as a marketing narrative? The results of the analysis show that the impact of AI on sustainability in the tourism sector remains at a more theoretical than practical stage.

Keywords:

sustainability, artificial intelligence, marketing, tourism, sustainable development

References

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