Tourists and AI: A political ideology perspective.

The tourism industry has adopted AI agents as substitutes for human contact. We examine how tourists respond to AI in hotel service settings during a pandemic. Four studies show that services featuring human interaction is preferred to AI enabled interaction. Moreover, subjective happiness is identified as the underlying causal mechanism that drives this effect. We provide further nuanced insights by showing that politically conservative tourists discriminate between service agent types more. Theoretically we contribute to a more fine-grained understanding of tourists' responses towards AI by examining an affective and an individual difference factor (political ideology). Practically, marketers are encouraged to incorporate tourists' ideologies and psychographics into segmentation, targeting, and positioning considerations, thereby enhancing their marketing effectiveness. • The tourism industry has adopted AI-enabled agents as substitutes for human contact. • Subjective happiness drives favorable responses towards human services. • Politically conservative tourists discriminate between service agent types. • For conservatives, human interaction remains a preferred touchpoint in services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]