The tourism industry has numerous examples of how smart technologies streamline Information System (IS) efforts and tourist experiences (Goo et al., 2022). As new business models emerge, a wave of technology-driven paradigms is transforming the tourism industry (Yang et al., 2024). Over the past two decades, the development of a tourism business ecosystem through various internet platforms and technological innovations has given rise to the concept of "smart tourism" (Gretzel et al., 2015). Now, the rise of AI is ushering smart tourism into a new era (Gupta et al., 2023). Tourism's rich history has produced extensive theoretical and practical implications across various disciplines, including marketing, management, branding, social network services, and online advertising. While IS in tourism remains a niche area in literature, its understanding continues to evolve. The field's momentum requires support from groundbreaking scholarly publications. With touristic products and experiences rapidly redefining the tourism industry through IS (Migliorini et al., 2024), this presents an optimal time to capitalize on this momentum in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The integration of IS research and tourism, coupled with vast data streams from devices, mobile phones, wearables, images, text, and voice inputs (Campbell et al., 2020; Kang et al., 2024) has only begun to tap into its full potential. Tourism practices can be significantly enhanced through IS applications, from elevating tourist experiences and refining destination marketing strategies to automating operations, streamlining customer support, optimizing targeted marketing, and extracting meaningful insights from tourist feedback (Koo et al., 2017, Verma et al., 2021). While these benefits make a compelling case for continued IS research, the pursuit of AI-driven opportunities in tourism development must be balanced against emerging concerns. Critical issues such as ethics, fairness, and data protection have become increasingly prominent (Vlačić et al., 2021). As tourists increasingly weave smartphones and AI into their travel experiences and daily routines, this early phase of AI development offers unique opportunities to expand both theoretical and practical understanding of IS in tourism. This special issue invites contributions that advance understanding of IS applications and methodologies within tourism contexts in the era of AI. We welcome research addressing the following areas, though submissions are not limited to these topics: 

• Smart tourism experience, smart tourism destination

• Smart business ecosystems and platform

• Psychological and behavioural reactions to IS developments in tourism products / services

• Cross-cultural differences and regional disparities in adoption of IS in tourism products / services

• AI-powered tourist experience

• Societal, cultural, and ethical issues related to AI-powered tourism marketing practices

• Assessment of the positive and negative implications of AI developments in tourism marketing

• Advanced and novel applications in tourism

• Advancing the machine learning methods for prediction and feature engineering in tourism

• IS for tourists’ decision making and choice modeling

• AI-powered service automation in tourism

• Big data and pattern recognition in tourism marketing

• Understanding tourists’ opinions using IS

• Ethical, privacy issue, security and data protection

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Submission

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This special issue will be composed of two categories of papers: (1) high calibre submissions through an open call for papers and (2) invited submissions that are extended or modified versions of selected papers accepted by the 3rd World Conference on Smart Tourism (WCST, December 16-20, 2025). For the latter category, the author(s) is expected to significantly improve the conference paper. Upon submission, a detailed explanation about the differences between the conference paper and the version submitted to this Special Issue is required.

The submitted manuscripts should not have been published before, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All manuscripts will go through a rigorous peer review process which involves at least two reviewers. The decision to accept or reject will be subject to the guest editors after their evaluation of the manuscript and reviews.

All manuscripts must be submitted via the Information Systems Frontiers online submission system at http://www.editorialmanager.com/isfi/. The author(s) must select “Interdisciplinary Research between IS and Tourism” during the submission process. To prepare for the submission, the author(s) should refer to the guidelines of Information Systems Frontiers at https://link.springer.com/journal/10796/submission-guidelines.

​Important date:

• Submission deadline: May 31, 2026

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Special Issue Guest Editors

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• Lawrence Hoc Nang Fong (lawrencefong@um.edu.mo), University of Macau, Macau SAR China

• Hesam Olya (h.olya@sheffield.ac.uk), The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

• Seunghun Shin (seung-hun.shin@polyu.edu.hk), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR China

• Chulmo Koo (helmetgu@khu.ac.kr), Kyung Hee University, South Korea

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Lawrence Hoc Nang Fong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management at the University of Macau. His research interests include information and communication technology in tourism, sensory marketing, and tourist psychology. His research has appeared at renowned tourism and hospitality journals such as Tourism Management, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, etc. He is serving and has served as a guest editor, associate editor, and editorial board member of multiple renowned journals including International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, Tourism Management Perspectives, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Journal of Smart Tourism, and others.

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Hesam Olya is a Full Professor and Head of Marketing and Cultural & Creative Industries at Sheffield University Management School, UK. Throughout his career, he actively pursued interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research to investigate complex social problems and develop impactful conclusions using digital innovations. Currently serving as associate editor of the International Journal of Consumer Studies and previously the methodology editor of Service Industries Journal, he has also held positions on the editorial boards of several journals, including Journal of Travel Research, International Marketing Review, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Journal of Vacation Marketing, and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, among others.

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Seunghun Shin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China. His research interests are metaverse marketing and social media analytics in the hospitality and tourism. His papers have been published in the Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, and so on.

Chulmo Koo is a Professor at the College of Hotel and Tourism Management and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Smart Tourism at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. His papers have been published in the Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Telematics and Informatics, Computers in Human Behavior, Information & Management, International Journal of Information Management, Decision Support Systems and so on. His major research areas are AI for smart tourism and eTourism.  

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References

• Campbell, C., Sands, S., Ferraro, C., Tsao, H.-Y., & Mavrommatis, A. (2020). From data to action: How marketers can leverage AI. Business Horizons, 63(2), 227-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2019.12.002

• Fox, L. (2025, January 9). Tripadvisor partners with Perplexity to improve trip planning. PhocusWire. Retrieved from https://www.phocuswire.com/tripadvisor-perplexity-ai-partnership

• Goo, J., Huang, C. D., Yoo, C. W., & Koo, C. (2022). Smart tourism technologies' ambidexterity: Balancing tourist's worries and novelty seeking for travel satisfaction. Information Systems Frontiers, 24(6), 2139-2158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-021-10233-6

• Gretzel, U., Sigala, M., Xiang, Z., & Koo, C. (2015). Smart tourism: foundations and developments. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 179-188. 

• Gupta, S., Modgil, S., Lee, C. K., & al. (2023). The future is yesterday: Use of AI-driven facial recognition to enhance value in the travel and tourism industry. Information Systems Frontiers, 25, 1179-1195

• https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-015-0196-8

• Kang, S. E., Kim, M. J., Kim, J. S., & Olya, H. (2024). Can I Trust GenAI to Plan My Next Trip? A Multi-Method Approach to Optimizing Media Mix. Journal of Travel Research, 00472875241305630.

• Koo, C., Park, J., & Lee, J. N. (2017). Smart tourism: Traveler, business, and organizational perspectives. Information and Management, 54(6), 683-686.

• Migliorini, S., Vecchia, A. D., Belussi, A., & Quintarelli, E . (2024). ARTEMIS: A context-aware recommendation system with crowding forecaster for the touristic domain. Information Systems Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-024-10512-y

• Verma, S., Sharma, R., Deb, S., & Maitra, D. (2021). Artificial intelligence in marketing: Systematic review and future research direction. International Journal of Information Management Data Insights, 1(1), 100002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jjimei.2020.100002

• Vlačić, B., Corbo, L., Costa e Silva, S., & Dabić, M. (2021). The evolving role of artificial intelligence in marketing: A review and research agenda. Journal of Business Research, 128, 187-203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.01.055

• Yang, C., Yang, J., Huang, J., You, B., & Hong, H. (2024). An investigation of technological innovation and tourism industrial structure upgrading as drivers of tourism economic growth. International Journal of Tourism Research, 26(4), e2687.