Artificial Intelligence and Tourism: A First Toolbox of Sources for Updating and Guidelines for Publishing

The advent of the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) system ChatGPT and its opening to the public at the end of 2022 marked a momentous change in the area of AI. Since then, the investment, development and application of GenAI systems and tools, have multiplied at great speed. The tourism sector is no exception, and as it has been the case with other digital technologies, tourism is playing a pioneering role in proposing new AI applications. In such a complex and constantly evolving scenario characterized by different approaches and models, as well as widespread and difficult-to-assess impacts, keeping up to date is imperative. This is especially true in tourism, where decisions on digital solutions leveraging AI require interdisciplinary skills and collaboration between a variety of stakeholders. To properly exploit the transformative potential of AI and GenAI, everyone researching, managing and using AI systems, even if not AI expert, need information to identify new trends, critical areas, innovative applications, key players, AI companies and research centers, regulations, and so on. To this end, this editorial offers a list of online sources that constitute a first toolbox to keep abreast of developments in AI and its applications. It also offers some general guidelines to define proper scope and questions for papers documenting studies on AI in tourism.