Human vs. AI: can ChatGPT improve tourism product descriptions?

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology with the potential to impact tourism in diverse ways. One important possible application of AI entails tourism suppliers employing AI-powered chatbots, such as ChatGPT, to generate marketing content. It is unclear, however, how such marketing content compares to content created by humans. Consequently, this study’s purpose was to compare perceptions of actual tour descriptions from TripAdvisor with ChatGPT-optimised versions of those descriptions. An experiment was conducted in which subjects (N = 579) were randomly provided either the actual description or a ChatGPT-optimised description of Panamanian indigenous cultural day-tours. Subjects then completed a questionnaire assessing variables including the text’s perceived tone, the information’s perceived usefulness and credibility, and the subjects’ desire to take the tour. Findings revealed ChatGPT improved the product descriptions along various dimensions, but did not significantly increase desire to take the tours. The findings make an important contribution to the incipient empirical tourism literature examining ChatGPT, and yield numerous theoretical and practical implications, which are discussed.