Journal of China Tourism Research

New Technologies Reshaping Tourist Experiences in China

Journal of China Tourism Research (JCTR) publishes the latest research on tourism related to China and its citizens and encourages interdisciplinary scholarship and commentary. It provides a rich forum for the exchange of fresh information and ideas among academics and practitioners; fosters and enhances cutting-edge research activities that advance tourism knowledge, and discusses the relevance of tourism to the Chinese society.

The rapid integration of emerging technologies into the tourism ecosystem has fundamentally transformed how tourists plan, experience, and reflect on their journeys. From smart destination infrastructure to AI-driven service innovation, technological advancement is no longer a supporting factor but a core driver reshaping tourist behavior, service delivery, and destination competitiveness. Recent years have seen accelerated adoption of contactless systems, low-altitude economics, wearable intelligence, and generative AI applications. While existing literature has examined digitalization in tourism, the pace of technological evolution, coupled with China's unique institutional, cultural, and market dynamics, calls for renewed scholarly attention. There is a pressing need for empirically grounded and theoretically innovative research that critically examines how new technologies are reconfiguring tourist experiences, service ecosystems, and policy frameworks within and beyond China.

This Special Issue invites submissions that explore the multifaceted intersections of technology and tourism in the Chinese context. We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions that advance understanding of both opportunities and challenges. In particular, we encourage work that is related to the broader technological ecology of tourism, including embodied, assistive, and infrastructural technologies. We also welcome contributions that foreground sociological perspectives on human-technology relations, including work that considers technology as a form of nonhuman agency and examines its ethical, social, and political implications for tourism practices, experiences, governance, labor, surveillance, and inequality.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Generative AI and Autonomous Agent Systems: Large language models, multi-modal AI, autonomous AI agents, agentic workflows, and intelligent automation in tourism contexts, including but not limited to personalized recommendation systems, chatbot applications, and AI-driven travel planning, and adaptive human-AI collaboration.
2. Contactless Travel Ecosystems: Face recognition systems, digital identity verification, touchless payment systems, and seamless travel experiences across the entire tourism value chain
3. Low-Altitude Economy and Tourism: Drone delivery services, eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft for tourist transportation, aerial tourism experiences, and related regulatory frameworks
4. Embodied, Assistive, and Mobility Technology: wearable devices, exoskeletons, robotic assistants, health-monitoring technologies, accessibility-enhancing devices, AR/VR-enabled equipment, and other technologies that extend, support, or reconfigure tourist mobility and bodily experience.
5. Smart Destination Infrastructure: IoT integration, real-time data analytics, crowd management systems, and intelligent tourism ecosystems
6. Technology-Enabled Sustainable and Inclusive Tourism: Environmental monitoring, carbon footprint tracking, conservation technologies, accessible tourism innovation, and technologies that support broader participation in tourism.
7. Privacy, Security, and Ethical Considerations: Data protection, algorithmic bias, surveillance concerns, digital divide issues, platform governance, and ethical implications of tourism technologies
8. Human-Technology Interaction in Tourism: Everyday technology use, cultural meanings of innovation, changing social relations, tourist subjectivities, platformization, labor transformation, and ethnographic or interpretive approaches to tourism and technology.