Generative AI and the tourist experience: reconfiguring en-route and post-trip value co-creation and co-destruction

GenAI chatbots increasingly influence tourist experiences beyond functioning as a tool. This study applies digital ethnography and semi-structured interviews, grounded in the Service-Dominant Logic framework, especially the dynamics of experiential value co-creation and co-destruction, to identify how GenAI reconfigures the en-route and post-trip experience. The findings indicate that GenAI chatbots, acting as active social actors, reconfigure tourists’ experiential values by co-creating functional, emotional, and social connected value. They may also co-destruct experiential value by causing cognitive dissonance, behavioural misalignment, and various technical constraints. The study further explores the recovery mechanism and argues that value co-creation and co-destruction are not binary opposites, for which reflective value can transform value co-destruction into a positive experience through multi-actor collaboration within the tourist-GenAI-destination system. Moving beyond a single-actor perspective, this research positions GenAI as part of a multi-actor tourism system where tourists, GenAI, and destinations jointly shape and transform experiential value.