AI-Driven Sustainable Tourism Offerings in Small Islands During Climate Crisis

The study focuses on artificial intelligence (AI)-driven sustainable tourism offerings (STO), whichattempted to explore the drivers, factors promoting the drivers, and the obstacles aligned to this topicin a specific climate-sensitive context: Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Drawing from aninterpretative approach and semistructured interviews with tourism stakeholders from the supplyand demand side followed by thematic analysis, key drivers identified were: speed, efficiency, customization, ecological crisis, the zero-waste culture, and resource constraints among others. Ethicalrules and regulations, costs, human readiness, trust, complexity, and contextual adaptation were thekey barriers of AI-powered STO. Some mediating factors were also extended. The study’s findingsalign and advance the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and diffusion ofinnovation (DOI) models by providing the first evidence of a set of 13 mix of internal and externalconstructs that affect the AI-driven STO in SIDS. Such insights can be used by policymakers, AIdesigners for the tourism arena, tourism businesses, and stakeholders of the industry to understand,test, and validate the use of AI-driven sustainable tourism marketing initiatives aiming at ecological conservations, economic resilience and stronger adaptation, and mitigation to climate changeimpacts, all while being contextually appropriate.