Mapping global research on AI-driven halal tourism marketing: a bibliometric and human-AI symbiosis perspectives

Abstract

The high number of publications about AI utilization for marketing purposes of halal tourism, particularly in 2022-2023, creates a unique challenge for new researchers to identify truly original research gaps. This study aims to observe the research trend of the implementation of AI in promoting local halal tourist sites globally. This study used bibliometric analysis to process metadata for 114 documents downloaded from Scopus between 2019 and 2025. This study generates a bibliometric map using Vosviewer and Biblioshiny software to present the most used words in previous studies, affiliations of authors, and journals with the highest citations, and content analysis using papers related to the results of the bibliometric. Results show that the research fields of previous studies are diverse yet still fragmented, with a strong emphasis on behavioral analytics and sentiment analysis. On the other hand, this study also reveals from affiliations with the highest citations and their total link strength that high-citation institutions are spread globally, including non-Islamic countries, showing broad international interest in AI for halal tourism marketing. However, some institutions have citations but low collaboration network strength, indicating strong authority but limited cross-institutional engagement.