Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping customer relationship management (CRM) practices in service industries, yet its perceived effectiveness within emerging regional tourism economies remains underexplored. This study examined respondents’ perceptions of how AI-enabled capabilities influence CRM effectiveness within the tourism sector in Mthatha, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Existing AI–CRM research is largely concentrated in developed economies, limiting contextual understanding of its strategic value in resource-constrained and relational tourism environments. A positivist, quantitative explanatory design was adopted, and data were collected through a structured survey administered to managers and staff of tourism enterprises across the Eastern Cape (n = 121). Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling was employed to assess the measurement model and test the hypothesized relationships. The model explained 63.2% of the variance in perceived CRM effectiveness. Sales forecasting and lead scoring exerted the strongest positive influence, followed by sentiment and feedback analysis, while personalization and automation showed positive but statistically insignificant effects. The findings suggest that tourism enterprises may achieve stronger relationship outcomes by prioritizing predictive and analytical AI tools while integrating automation within human-centered service strategies. The study extends AI–CRM theory to an emerging African tourism context and demonstrates that AI effectiveness is context dependent rather than universally transferable.

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