Human–AI Interaction and Work Transformation: Insights From Tourism Professionals

Abstract

This study examines how generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping tourism work through tourism professionals’ experiences. Drawing on semi-structured interviews supplemented by contextual fieldnotes with 18 workers across tour guiding, travel consulting, customer service, and tour design in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the study explores how GenAI is enacted in everyday practice. The findings show that GenAI functions as cognitive augmentation rather than substitution, with workers maintaining destination interpretation, emotional engagement, and creative control by verifying, adapting, and humanizing AI outputs. Work transformation emerges as an iterative process involving adoption, enactment, and the renegotiation of tourism professional skills and identities. In addition, organizational conditions—particularly leadership support, psychological safety, and ethical governance—play a critical role in shaping outcomes. The study introduces the concept of AI-mediated tourism work as a lens for understanding human–AI collaboration in tourism and highlights its importance in sustaining meaningful and adaptive tourism service.