AI-Driven E-Commerce in Hospitality and Tourism: Digital Platforms, Consumer Experience, and Decision-Making

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence into e-commerce is fundamentally transforming the hospitality and tourism industries. Digital platforms now influence almost every stage of the customer journey, including information search, destination selection, price comparison, booking, payment, service delivery, experience sharing, and post-purchase evaluation. AI-enabled technologies, such as recommender systems, conversational agents, generative AI, predictive analytics, dynamic pricing, and automated customer service, enable tourism and hospitality organizations to provide more personalized, responsive, and data-driven experiences. These developments create significant opportunities for service innovation, operational efficiency, customer engagement, and the development of new digital business models.

At the same time, the growing dependence on intelligent platforms introduces important managerial, behavioral, ethical, and societal challenges. Concerns relating to algorithmic transparency, data privacy, cybersecurity, consumer trust, digital inclusion, platform dependency, service authenticity, and responsible AI require further theoretical and empirical investigation. Consumer responses to AI-enabled services may also vary according to technological readiness, perceived risk, cultural context, service type, and the degree of human–AI interaction. Research in this area is therefore timely and significant for advancing academic understanding while providing practical guidance to tourism businesses, hospitality organizations, online travel platforms, destination managers, technology providers, and policymakers.

This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent theoretical, empirical, and methodological advances related to AI-driven e-commerce in hospitality and tourism. We welcome contributions examining how digital platforms and AI-enabled services transform consumer experiences, decision-making processes, marketing strategies, service delivery, organizational performance, and digital business models. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, qualitative, quantitative, experimental, conceptual, and mixed-method studies are particularly encouraged.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:

• AI-driven e-commerce in hospitality and tourism;
• Online travel agencies and digital tourism platforms;
• Generative AI applications in travel planning and hospitality services;
• AI-enabled recommender systems and personalized tourism experiences;
• Chatbots, virtual assistants, and conversational commerce;
• Consumer adoption of AI-enabled tourism and hospitality services;
• Online consumer behavior and travel decision-making;
• Digital customer journeys and omnichannel experiences;
• Consumer trust, perceived risk, and acceptance of artificial intelligence;
• Algorithmic transparency, explainability, and fairness;
• Data privacy, cybersecurity, and responsible AI;
• Dynamic pricing, revenue management, and predictive analytics;
• Digital marketing, social commerce, and influencer marketing in tourism;
• Electronic word of mouth, online reviews, and AI-generated content;
• Human–AI interaction and technology-mediated service encounters;
• Customer engagement, satisfaction, loyalty, and value co-creation;
• Platform-based service innovation and digital business models;
• Smart tourism technologies and digitally enabled destinations;
• Virtual reality, augmented reality, and immersive tourism commerce;
• Cross-cultural differences in technology adoption and consumer behavior;
• Sustainability, accessibility, and digital inclusion in tourism e-commerce;
• Organizational readiness and digital transformation in hospitality and tourism;
• Ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI-driven tourism commerce.

Dr. Bassam Al-Romeedy
Guest Editor

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