Generative AI as a tourism actor: Reconceptualising experience co-creation, destination governance and responsible innovation in the synthetic experience economy

Purpose: This conceptual study examines how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) reshapes value co creation, destination governance, and responsible innovation in tourism. It seeks to reposition GenAI from a backstage tool to a tourism actor and to present the Synthetic Experience System, a triadic framework connecting Tourist, GenAI, and Place/Community through data, content, and emotion layers. Methods: The paper follows an integrative theory building approach. It abductively synthesises tourism literature, information systems, marketing, psychology and ethics to surface recurring constructs, situates them within the service dominant logic and the actor–network theory, and iteratively refines a model through comparison of GenAI applications focusing on responsible research and innovation. Results: Analysis reveals three continuous co creation loops that circulate agency among actors and four boundary conditions—authenticity, bias, sustainability, privacy—that determine system viability. The Synthetic Experience System clarifies where value emerges, identifies points of potential value co destruction, and yields fifteen research propositions spanning tourist cognition, firm capabilities, destination policy, and planetary carbon limits. Implications: The framework provides a roadmap for destination management organisations, platform designers, and regulators to audit algorithms, design participatory prompts, and adopt carbon aware deployment. By naming actors, layers, and boundaries, the study offers a shared vocabulary that can anchor empirical investigations and stimulate cross disciplinary citations in tourism, information systems, and sustainability research.