Following the increasing trend of artificial intelligence (AI) research in hospitality literature, this critical reflection paper aims to identify AI-assisted mindfulness as a critical yet under-investigated issue and to contribute feasible directions for future research.
The authors first conceptualize a framework explaining the effects of mindfulness design in AI interventions on improving human mindfulness. The authors then identify opportunities for interventions in AI-assisted mindfulness for the tourism, hospitality and events industries. Finally, the authors propose potential themes for AI-assisted mindfulness research.
This study contributes three major conceptual works. First, we conceptualize a framework of AI-assisted mindfulness, showcasing that the scope of AI-assisted mindfulness spans from AI interventions to state mindfulness and then to trait mindfulness. Second, the authors offer two approaches to strategic thinking, one from mindfulness (i.e. mindfulness-focused niche markets and activities) and one from AI applications (i.e. AI-facilitated devices and platforms), to identify opportunities for AI-assisted mindfulness interventions. Third, for both management- and marketing-oriented AI-assisted mindfulness research, the authors propose 18 themes.
This critical reflection paper offers directions for future knowledge creation in AI-assisted mindfulness in the tourism, hospitality and events industries.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this critical reflection paper serves as the first in hospitality and tourism literature to systematically propose the research issue of AI-assisted mindfulness, offering directions and themes for future research.
