Can GenAI nudge tourism demand toward less-visited destinations? Evidence from China

GenAI is reshaping how tourists discover destinations, with important implications for spatial imbalances between over – and less-visited destinations. Using China as the empirical context, this paper draws on Baidu search and migration indices to track the popularisation of GenAI and associated shifts in tourism flows. An ARDL model and Granger causality tests show that GenAI popularisation significantly increases tourism demand for less-visited destinations, with long-run elasticities exceeding short-run effects. Framed by Digital Nudging Theory, our findings suggest that GenAI popularisation can act as a demand-management lever by surfacing off-peak routes in AI-mediated search and itinerary generation, thereby promoting more balanced tourism development.