Dear Colleagues, 

The concept of heritage is multifaceted and includes not only tangible objects, such as private possessions, but also public places and intangible things, such as history. All of these aspects of heritage are important and determine how people engage with heritage, and how people’s experiences in popular sites unfold and affect them. In this sense, heritage is more a matter of collective rather than personal preference, and it is linked to past experience, i.e., culture, such as a historical event at a given site. Heritage thus includes a substantial amount of information related to the history of a site, as well as personal knowledge and past experience, and each tourist produces their own experience of a site by combining their personal history with that of the place they are visiting.

Artificial intelligence (AI), which plays an increasingly critical role in our everyday life, has infiltrated the field of tourism and the way we experience heritage. As travel, tourism, and leisure have become increasingly reliant on technology, it is more important than ever to improve personal experiences by connecting an omnipresent and contextual present, past, and future time and space. The emergence of AR/VR equipped with AI-based technology has been introduced into our cultural and heritage tourism experience to assist our travel and leisure activities and has increasingly penetrated sites, places, and spaces to facilitate experience creation and service automation in old towns, museums, theme parks, festivals and events, etc. Cultural and heritage tourism experiences around the world have been transformed to enable AI to be connected to tangible and intangible objects, creating a more well-rounded view of historical and past experience. As a result, AI and smart tourism are rapidly changing the way they engage with travellers, while enabling travellers to produce their own personal experience by selectively matching the information gained from personal knowledge and past experience.

Dr. Yeongbae Choe
Dr. Lawrence Hoc Nang Fong
Prof. Dr. Chulmo Koo
Guest Editors

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• Artificial intelligence
• Cultural experience
• Heritage experience
• Technologies
• Smart tourism