This study investigates the issues of artificial intelligence, privacy, and ethics in the context of smart tourism and determines the governance mechanisms needed for adopting AI in smart tourism applications. The methodology employed for this research study was a systematic literature review using the PRISMA framework. A total of 622 Scopus-indexed journal articles published between 2019 and 2026 were screened using predefined eligibility criteria, resulting in 57 included studies. The data were analysed using descriptive analysis and deductive-inductive thematic analysis to determine the major themes and issues regarding the topic of smart tourism. As a result, six themes were determined to be crucial to the governance of AI in smart tourism applications: privacy calculus, data autonomy, and personalisation; trust, transparency, explainability, and disclosure; bias, fairness, and representational integrity; human–AI collaboration and workforce ethics; destination and ecosystem governance; and cybersecurity, safety, resilience, and risk management. The findings of the study indicate that most smart tourism AI research currently focuses on the concerns of tourists, employees, organisations, technology providers, and smart tourism destinations and their management. For smart tourism applications to adopt AI in a responsible manner, concerns regarding privacy, consent, explainability, fairness, human oversight, participation, security, accountability, and redress must be addressed. The findings of this study contribute to the existing knowledge of the ethics of artificial intelligence in smart tourism by proposing an integrated framework for governing artificial intelligence within smart tourism applications over their entire lifecycle. This framework can assist the researchers, tourism organisations, destination managers, and policymakers when deciding on the governance of AI within smart tourism applications.
This study examined the nexus between gastronomy tourism and agritourism from the perspective of paradigm shift for hospitality competitiveness. Data for this study was harvested from Scopus database. The time range for the data is 2015-2025. The harvested data was analysed with bibliometric analysis, while systematic analysis was also conducted for selected literature. Foods and drinks are usually processed outputs of agricultural activities. Hence, gastronomy tourism is etched into agritourism, especially when such gastronomy activities take place on or around farms. The most engaged word revealed by the analysis of this study is agritourism, followed by gastronomy and so on. This implies, that gastronomy tourism carried out for this study largely took place on and around agritourism destinations. Hospitality is sine-qua-non to the survival of tourism businesses. Hence, hospitality businesses around agritourism and gastronomy tourism destinations must endeavour to remaining competitive. The main driver of hospitality competitiveness pointed out by this study is service quality. Hence, gastronomy tourism has the capacity to either drive or complement agritourism, while hospitality competitiveness fosters the growth and development of both agritourism and gastronomy tourism.
This study examines the degree to which local communities exercise meaningful agency in tourism governance and equitable revenue distribution at South Africa heritage sites, drawing on Sudwala Caves (Mpumalanga) as an empirical case. A mixed-methods approach was employed, incorporating focus group discussions, structured questionnaires and polling among 44 residents of the Mankele community. Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation guided the analysis of community involvement in tourism governance. The findings indicate that local residents derive limited direct economic benefits from tourism and have restricted influence in decision-making processes. Participants also expressed concerns regarding cultural and environmental impacts associated with tourism development. Although support for tourism remained strong, community participation was largely characterised by tokenistic engagement that seldom translated into meaningful influence over governance outcomes. The study concludes that existing governance arrangements inadequately promote community empowerment and equitable benefit-sharing. The findings argue for a reorientation of heritage tourism governance frameworks toward approaches that prioritise redistributive benefit-sharing, cultural reclamation and participatory co-management. By providing empirical evidence from a restitution-linked heritage tourism context, the study contributes to debates on participatory governance, decolonial tourism and heritage management. It further proposes a framework for advancing tourism justice through community self-determination, offering practical insights for policymakers and heritage practitioners.
This study examines how the spatial design of community-based tourism (CBT) accommodation shapes tourist-community connection (TCC), and whether this relationship depends on tourists' prior visitation experience. Data were collected from 300 tourists at CBT accommodation in Vietnam and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling, followed by a permutation-based multi-group analysis comparing first-time and repeat visitors. Results show that four spatial design elements, local identity-oriented architecture, shared activity spaces, local cuisine, and use of local materials, all significantly and positively predict TCC, jointly explaining 60,9% of its variance, with local materials the strongest driver and local cuisine the weakest. Prior visitation experience moderates only the effect of shared activity spaces, which is significantly stronger for repeat tourists, while other relationships hold equally across both groups. These findings position accommodation design as a prioritizable instrument for building cultural connection, giving CBT operators and planners an evidence-based basis for design investment. The study contributes a novel, empirically integrated framework linking place identity, host-guest interaction, and experience economy perspectives to accommodation spatial design.
Research issues concerning tourism and local economic development in small towns of South Africa have attracted much active concern. This research interest is boosted by South African policies for local government and tourism which allocate substantial responsibility to local government for tourism. Arguably, the practice of destination management is one of the most significant underpinnings for successful local tourism development albeit it is one of the least well-researched at the level of local governments in South Africa. The study is framed within an international literature and debates on destination development and represents a novel contribution to the limited body of African knowledge relating to the public sector and the challenges of local governments in destination management. The case study is of the Overstrand Local Municipality in Western Cape Province and based upon a quantitative profile of local tourism performance and the findings from 40 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2025 with tourism business stakeholders. The key findings reinforce the importance of the practice of destination management and in particular around both destination marketing and a cluster of issues surrounding an improved business environment.
