Artificial Intelligence in Homestay Tourism: Examining the Role of AI-Enabled Guest Relations in Enhancing Tourist Experience and Loyalty

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly relevant in the tourism and hospitality industry, where it is being used for customer communication, personalized recommendations, automated services, and other forms of technology-enabled support. Existing research has largely examined AI applications in hotels and other organized hospitality settings, while giving comparatively less attention to homestay tourism. This is an important area to explore because homestays differ from conventional accommodation in their emphasis on personal interaction, host–guest relationships, local knowledge, and cultural experiences. This study examines how AI-enabled guest relations shape tourists\' experiences and loyalty in homestay tourism. It focuses on practical applications of AI, including personalized communication, responsiveness, recommendations, and assistance before, during, and after a stay. The study proposes tourist experience as a link between AI-enabled guest relations and tourist loyalty, while perceived authenticity and trust in AI are considered as additional factors that may influence tourists\' responses to AI-supported services. The study adopts a quantitative research approach and proposes the use of a structured questionnaire to collect data from tourists who have experienced AI-enabled services in homestays. The proposed relationships can be examined using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).

Introduction

The text explores AI-enabled guest relations in homestay tourism and their influence on tourist experience and loyalty. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly common in tourism and hospitality, it offers opportunities to improve communication, personalize services, provide recommendations, and respond quickly to guests' needs.

Unlike conventional hotels, homestays rely heavily on personal interaction between hosts and guests. Tourists often value local culture, authentic experiences, personal attention, and recommendations from hosts. Therefore, AI should support these human interactions rather than replace them.

1. Role of AI in Homestay Tourism

AI can assist homestay hosts at different stages of the guest journey:

• Before arrival: Providing information about transportation, weather, check-in procedures, and nearby attractions.

• During the stay: Answering questions, translating messages, suggesting local restaurants, and recommending activities based on guest preferences.

• After departure: Sending personalized follow-up messages and collecting guest feedback.

These applications can improve convenience, responsiveness, and personalization while allowing hosts to focus on meaningful personal interactions.

2. AI-Enabled Guest Relations

Guest relations involve communicating with tourists, understanding their needs, solving problems, providing assistance, and building positive relationships.

AI can improve guest relations through four main factors:

• Personalization: Tailoring services and information to individual preferences.

• Communication: Providing clear and accessible information through AI-supported tools.

• Responsiveness: Answering questions quickly and offering timely assistance.

• Recommendation quality: Suggesting relevant attractions, restaurants, and local experiences.

However, excessive dependence on AI may reduce personal interaction and affect tourists' perceptions of the authenticity of their homestay experience.

3. Problem Statement and Research Gap

Although AI has been widely studied in hotels and other hospitality settings, its role in homestay tourism remains comparatively underexplored. Existing research often examines AI-based services separately from the host–guest relationships that shape homestay experiences.

The study identifies five main research gaps:

• Context gap: Limited research on AI applications specifically in homestays.

• Guest-relations gap: Insufficient understanding of how AI supports communication, personalization, and responsiveness.

• Experience gap: Limited evidence about how AI-enabled interactions influence the overall tourist experience.

• Authenticity gap: Uncertainty about whether AI preserves or reduces the perceived genuineness of homestay experiences.

• Loyalty gap: A need to understand whether AI-supported guest relations encourage repeat visits and recommendations.

4. Research Objectives

The study aims to:

1. Examine the role of AI-enabled guest relations in homestay tourism.

2. Investigate how AI-enabled guest relations influence tourist experiences.

3. Examine the relationship between tourist experience and tourist loyalty.

4. Determine whether tourist experience mediates the relationship between AI-enabled guest relations and tourist loyalty.

5. Assess the role of perceived authenticity in tourists' responses to AI.

6. Investigate how trust in AI influences the use of AI-enabled guest services.

7. Develop and test a conceptual model connecting these factors.

5. Proposed Conceptual Framework

The proposed framework includes five major variables:

• AI-enabled guest relations: Personalization, communication, responsiveness, recommendation quality, and convenience.

• Tourist experience: The overall experience resulting from interactions with the host and AI-supported services.

• Tourist loyalty: Tourists' willingness to revisit the homestay or recommend it to others.

• Perceived authenticity: The extent to which tourists feel that the homestay experience remains genuine and culturally meaningful.

• Trust in AI: Tourists' confidence in the reliability and appropriateness of AI-supported services.

The central idea is that AI-enabled guest relations may improve tourist experience, which may subsequently strengthen tourist loyalty. Perceived authenticity and trust in AI are also considered important factors that may influence tourists' responses to AI-enabled services.

6. Research Hypotheses

The text proposes four initial hypotheses:

• H1: AI-enabled personalization positively influences tourist experience.

• H2: AI-enabled communication positively influences tourist experience.

• H3: AI-enabled responsiveness positively influences tourist experience.

• H4: The quality of AI-generated recommendations positively influences tourist experience.

These hypotheses establish the proposed relationships to be examined in the study.

Conclusion

The study examines how AI can improve guest relations, tourist experiences, and loyalty in homestay tourism without compromising the personal and cultural qualities that distinguish homestays from conventional accommodation.

Conclusion

AI is changing the way tourism businesses communicate with customers, but homestay tourism requires a slightly different approach. The main attraction of a homestay is often the personal experience: meeting the host, learning about local culture and feeling connected to the destination. Technology should therefore support these experiences rather than replace them. This paper proposes that AI-enabled guest relations may improve tourist experience through better communication, personalization, responsiveness and recommendations. A better experience may then encourage tourists to revisit and recommend the homestay. At the same time, authenticity and trust are likely to matter because tourists may respond differently to technology depending on whether they still feel that the experience is genuine. The proposed study can therefore help answer an important question for the future of homestay tourism: how can AI be used to make guest relations better while keeping the human side of hospitality at the center?

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Bhupesh Thakur. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.