How can ChatGPT assist hospitality and tourism education?

ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI) poses new challenges and opportunities for hospitality and tourism (H&T) education. This study explores how ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by a generative pre-trained transformer model, can affect H&T curriculum design and delivery. Using secondary data from academic articles, news reports, and official documents, the paper applies curriculum theory and stakeholder theory to examine the competencies, expectations, and interests of H&T students, educators, and industry practitioners regarding ChatGPT. This study reveals that ChatGPT can enhance learning outcomes and experiences, improve educational equity and efficiency, and raise ethical, technical, and pedagogical issues for H&T education. This research note also offers insights and recommendations for H&T educators to integrate ChatGPT into their teaching practices and prepare students for research work and careers that incorporate generative AI. Moreover, the study contributes to the literature on H&T education by examining the role and impact of ChatGPT as an innovative and emerging technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• CatGPT
• tourism and hospitality
• education

Acknowledgements

This research was also partly supported by a research grant funded by the University of Macau.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the general project on Humanities and Social Sciences Research in Higher Education Institutions in Anhui Province [SK2021B14]; the project of National Natural Science Foundation of China [42271254] and the major project of National Social Science Foundation [21&ZD179].