Egyptian Millennial Travellers' Willingness to Adopt and Use Travel Chatbots: An Exploratory Study

Purpose – This research study focuses on investigating travel chatbots adoption among Egyptian millennial travellers. The study thus attempts to find out Egyptian millennial travellers' motives for using travel chatbots, their perceptions of risks, and future use intention.  
Design/Methodology/Approach – An online questionnaire was developed to assess motives for using travel chatbots, perceived risks, and use intention based on several previous qualitative research studies. The survey was directed to Egyptian millennial travellers (N=241) and distributed via Facebook and WhatsApp.      
Findings – The two strongest motivations for adopting travel chatbots among respondents were productivity followed by curiosity. Though chatbot users did not perceive travel chatbots as risky, non-users perceived them as risky in terms of privacy and global AI-related risks. Nevertheless, both chatbot users and non-users exhibited a positive attitude towards future use intention. 
Practical implication – The results of this study provide travel and tourism businesses in Egypt with an understanding of millennial travellers' motives and behavioural intention to adopt new technologies such as travel chatbots. Such understanding would help businesses design and deliver quality online tourism experiences to their customers.
Originality/Value – There is quite a sufficient number of studies focusing on chatbots and AI-powered conversational agents, however, research on the motives for using travel chatbots is still scarce. No previous studies discussing travel chatbots adoption among Millennials were conducted in Egypt. Thus, the study contributes to academia as it adds to the scarce research on Egyptian Millennials' travel technology use behaviour.