Reconceptualizing customer experience co-creation and service delivery in the age of artificial intelligence

The growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into hospitality service systems is reshaping foundational assumptions about customer experience co-creation. Traditionally conceptualized as a human-centered, relational process emerging through emotionally attuned employee-guest interactions, co-creation is increasingly mediated by intelligent technologies that influence how experiences are produced, delivered and interpreted. This conceptual paper develops a socio-technical reframing of co-creation that moves beyond dyadic provider-consumer models to theorize hybrid, triadic configurations involving customers, employees, and AI systems. Drawing on service-dominant logic, sociomateriality, and emotional labor theory, the paper examines how AI redistributes agency, alters relational dynamics, and transforms interpretive labor within service encounters. It further outlines the managerial implications of hybrid hospitality, including the need for workforce reskilling, algorithmic governance, cultural reframing, and cross-functional alignment. A future research agenda highlights questions surrounding distributed agency, guest autonomy, employee identity, experiential equity, and the ethical governance of algorithmic actors. The paper argues that hospitality’s future lies in designing responsible hybrid systems in which technological precision and human empathy function as complementary sources of experiential value.