According to the latest statistics from MDPI, a leading open access publisher, Professor Wai Ming To and Associate Professor Billy T. W. Yu’s work titled “Artificial Intelligence Research in Tourism and Hospitality Journals: Trends, Emerging Themes, and the Rise of Generative AI” (https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp6020063) has attracted significant interest from researchers around the globe. Over the past six months, it has become the triple top article, recognized as the most cited, most viewed, and most downloaded article in the Journal. Furthermore, it has been acknowledged as one of the notable papers in Artificial Intelligence and Tourism by the Journal.  

What is this article about?

This research explored the trends and major themes surrounding artificial intelligence within the context of tourism and hospitality research. On 5 March 2025, a search was conducted using “artificial intelligence” and related terms in the “Title, Abstract, and Keywords”, concentrating on tourism and hospitality journals listed in the Scopus database. The search yielded 921 documents, comprising 882 articles and 39 reviews. The document count rose from just 3 in 1987 to 277 in 2024. The findings showed that Chinese researchers produced the highest number of documents, totaling 262 articles and reviews. A keyword co-occurrence analysis revealed four key themes: “machine learning and sentiment analysis of online reviews”, “adoption of AI including robots and ChatGPT in the hospitality industry”, “artificial neural networks for tourism management and demand analysis”, and “random forest models in travel”. Furthermore, the study uncovered a transition in research focus from tourism demand forecasting and sentiment analysis to the utilization of service bots and the application of artificial intelligence to enhance service quality, with a growing interest in generative AI tools like ChatGPT.