Artificial Intelligence in Hospitality Geosites: From Algorithms to Action in Shaping Consumer Behavior and Marketing

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping customer engagement, yet its influence on consumer behavior within hospitality and tourism services remains underexplored.This study examines the associations among AI-enabled engagement, digital marketing, and consumer behavior in hospitality and tourism contexts.Survey data were collected from 221 respondents and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) in an exploratory capacity.The measurement analysis revealed that AI, digital marketing, and consumer behavior are very strongly interrelated: inter-construct correlations were high (AI-DM r = 0.871; DM-CB r = 0.882) and exceeded the square roots of the average variance extracted, so the three constructs did not achieve discriminant validity under the Fornell-Larcker criterion.Rather than interpreting this as a mediation mechanism, the study treats it as a substantive finding: in this hospitality and tourism setting, consumers appear to experience AI, the digital marketing it enables, and their own engagement responses as a single, tightly coupled digitalengagement domain rather than as separable constructs.Model fit was marginal (RMSEA = 0.113; CFI = 0.870), so all relationships are reported as indicative and associational rather than causal.The study contributes contextually by situating AI within hospitality and tourism service ecosystems and by documenting the strong convergence of these digital-engagement constructs, offering guidance for hospitality organizations and advancing discourse on sustainable, human-centered tourism strategies aligned with logistics, informatics, and service science.