Hotel services in the digital age: Heterogeneity in guests’ contactless technology acceptance

ABSTRACT

Although contactless technologies provide smarter and safer experiences to hotel guests, their acceptance is not universal. This study, which considers six types of contactless technology used in hotels, contributes to the literature on the technology readiness index framework and provides insights into hotel guests’ acceptance of different contactless technologies. By integrating latent classes and a hybrid feature into an ordinal logit model, our investigation identified intrinsic acceptance of contactless technology and response style as two distinct sources of heterogeneity in the observed answers to a technology acceptance survey. These two sources of heterogeneity play different roles in individuals’ adoption of contactless technologies and have theoretical and practical implications. To better understand guests’ acceptance of new technologies, researchers and practitioners should consider these types of heterogeneity in their investigations.

尽管非接触式技术可以为酒店住客提供更智能、更安全的体验, 不同住客对这类技术的接受程度却各不相同。本研究以技术就绪理论框架为基础, 深入探索了住客对酒店服务中六种非接触式技术的偏好, 并对酒店住客对不同技术的接受程度进行了分析。通过在次序性逻辑模型中融入潜类别模型和混合特征, 本研究发现了酒店住客在回答技术接受度调查问卷时存在两种不同的异质性, 即技术内在接受度异质性和问卷回答风格异质性。这两种异质性在酒店住客接受非接触式技术时发挥着不同的作用, 并具有相当的理论与实践意义。研究人员与酒店从业者也应当充分考虑不同异质性对酒店住客的影响, 以更好的理解酒店住客对新技术的接受程度。

KEYWORDS:

• technology readiness
• intrinsic acceptance
• response style
• contactless technology
• latent class hybrid ordinal logit model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Walter & Wendy Kwok Family Foundation Professorship in International Hospitality Management.