Over the past decade, tourism has evolved into a data driven and intelligent industry in which artificial intelligence plays a central role in personalized marketing, destination management, and enhancing the tourist experience. However, deploying this technology in destinations facing institutional and infrastructural constraints is accompanied by considerable uncertainty. Adopting a futures studies approach and a mixed qualitative–quantitative methodology, the present research assesses the feasibility of implementing artificial intelligence in data driven marketing and destination management for urban tourism in Kermanshah. In the first phase, a review of the literature and semi structured interviews with 18 experts led to the identification of 38 influential factors. Structural analysis using MICMAC then revealed key drivers (investment in digital infrastructure, data quality, supportive policymaking, and digital literacy) as well as two critical uncertainties: the level of institutional support and the pace of AI technological advancement. Based on these uncertainties, four future scenarios were developed, with the most plausible being the “fragmented and uncoordinated development of smart technologies.” The findings indicate that Kermanshah possesses significant potential for smart tourism; however, without coordinated enhancement of infrastructure, data governance, and human capacity, it risks lagging behind in digital transformation. The study underscores the necessity of shifting from reactive to anticipatory approaches and proposes a policy roadmap for achieving integrated smart tourism in Kermanshah.