Co-creating with ChatGPT for tourism marketing materials

The launch of ChatGPT has the potential to disrupt conventional approaches to tourism marketing. In this context, the present research explores the distinguishability between marketing content created by ChatGPT and that by tourism marketers, while also comparing their respective effects on downstream tourism marketing outcomes. Drawing on two online experiments aligned with realistic destination marketing endeavors, the findings reveal that tourism marketing materials created by ChatGPT successfully pass the Turing Test and achieve textual fluency and perceived attractiveness that are no lower than those yielded by tourism marketers. This study provides preliminary experimental evidence showing the efficacy of applying generative AI like ChatGPT in creating tourism marketing materials, advocating a co-creation relationship between generative AI and tourism marketers.