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This study aimed to identify distinctive characteristics of hotel guests and understand their perception of guestroom technologies (GRTs) in hotels by utilizing the theory of consumer innovativeness and the social influence theory.

The data were collected from 268 hotel guests. The K-means clustering algorithm was employed to identify participants based on their views on the significance of technologies provided in guest rooms. A multivariate analysis of variance was applied to investigate if there were significant differences among clusters regarding social influence on hotel bookings, technology innovativeness and technology expertise and knowledge.

Two clusters were identified: technology compassionates and casual users of technology. Findings revealed that technology compassionates are more influenced by their friends when booking a hotel compared to casual users of technology. The ability to link up multiple wireless mobile devices, accessible outlets and mobile websites were the most critical GRTs for technology compassionates.

Technology should be considered a crucial part of the hotel guest experience. Hoteliers ought to continue investing in smart technologies to improve their guests' experiences. GRTs can reduce overhead staff costs while giving guests more control over their stay by utilizing everyday items like smartphones and offering them more power over their lodging experience.

This study advances the existing literature on GRTs by identifying which GRTs produce the most customer satisfaction. Moreover, this study explores the impact of social influence, innovativeness as a personality trait and having expert knowledge of technologies on preferences for GRTs.

Advances in technology and in subsequent guest-related amenities have the potential to improve the guest experience and also increase both guestroom revenues and ancillary room revenues. Innovative technologies will be one of the prime differentiators of hotel companies in the twenty-first century. However, it is important for hoteliers to answer questions such as which technology amenities do their guests desire when choosing overnight accommodations? Further, what are the importance levels assigned by guests of these various technology amenities? This study aims to answer the question of how leisure travelers may differ or be similar to business travelers with regard to in-room technology amenities.

The target population of this study consisted of 2,500 US residents whose email addresses were randomly drawn from a national database company. A series of t-tests and ANOVA were conducted to answer the research questions.

High-speed internet access and guest device connectivity were perceived more important by business travelers than by leisure travelers.

Recognizing guests’ technology needs and answering those needs are important for hotel operators to remain competitive. While some segments perceive more value in certain technologies, for others it might be an indifferent amenity.

The amount of time guests spend in their rooms directly correlates to increased revenues from in-room dining, in-room amenities offered and, in general, all pay-for-use products and services such as the internet and movies. Therefore, with the right assortment and offering of technology amenities, hotels will increase their revenues from these ancillary revenues. Moreover, a hotel property with the right mixture of desired in-room amenities and services can charge higher rates for their guestroom sales.

The results of this study provide insights into the changing attitudes toward in-room entertainment technology that many hotel developers should take note of.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a benchmark for hotel operators to understand in-room technology trends and the impact of in-room technology on business performance.

The survey questions are based on existing literature and suggestions from the American Hotel and Lodging Association Technology and E-commerce Committee. The authors collected 206 usable samples from managers, vice presidents, presidents, owners and executives from hotel companies and utilized cross-tab analysis and multiple regression analysis.

The results demonstrate that installing specific in-room technologies can have a significant effect on enhancing the customer experience and increasing revenue. The study also presents the most commonly installed in-room technologies those hoteliers plan to install in the near future.

Proper strategies are recommended to help hospitality managers understand the impact of different in-room technologies on the hospitality industry; particularly as they relate to guest experience and profitability.

By identifying the most popular in-room technologies currently available and examining which in-room technologies can be effective at enhancing guest experience and increasing revenue, this study fills the gap between the findings of previous studies and the observations from industry practitioners.

In‐room entertainment technology continues to evolve in the hotel industry. However, given the multitude of entertainment products available in the market place today, hoteliers have little clarity of guests' willingness to pay for those in‐room entertainment technology amenities. In this highly competitive environment for travelers, lodging managers should better understand what in‐room entertainment technology amenities their guests will purchase. The purpose of this study is to explore accepted pricing levels for in‐room entertainment technology amenities by hotel guests.

A sample of 2,500 US travelers was drawn randomly from a national database by rent‐a‐list.com for this study. An online survey was distributed. The response rate was 16.32 percent with 408 respondents.

Findings showed that guests want most of the in‐room entertainment technology amenities as complimentary. However, they are willing to pay for gaming consoles in their guest rooms.

This is the first paper that investigates the phenomenon of in‐room entertainment technology amenities. Implications are vital for hotel firms that aim to install the amenities.

This paper presents an analysis of the impact of current technologies on customer experiences in upscale hotels and assesses the potential of the latest technologies for enhancing customers’ stay.

A two-step approach was applied in this study. The qualitative phase included an examination of upscale hotel websites, interviews with hotel managers and an internet search regarding the latest technological innovations in hotels. In the quantitative stage, a questionnaire was developed for hotel guests, generating a sample of 310 valid completed questionnaires.

The results reveal that hotel guests value digital involvement in their hotel experience. Moreover, business travellers and younger generations give greater importance to latest technologies.

This study analyses the most innovative technologies, providing guidance for hoteliers wishing to upgrade or implement new technologies. Based on the findings, hoteliers can achieve greater differentiation by offering the most important and latest technology to guests, enhancing their experience and attracting new customers, which can potentially lead to increased revenues. The study’s results are also important because they include the perceptions of both managers and customers.

The purpose of the paper is to provoke thought and perhaps response to a new form of identity assurance and security in the lodging industry. For a fact, biometric technology is quickly becoming a principal method of identification in today's fast‐paced networked and security‐conscious society. Increasingly, more and more organizations are adopting this form of technology to enhance security, improve business processes and increase productivity. The paper highlights the fundamentals of biometric technology, and its application in the lodging industry. The paper also addresses factors that should be considered to ensure successful deployment in the lodging industry.

This paper reviews the fundamentals of biometric technology at the discursive level and provides insights on its practical applications in the lodging industry.

Biometric technology offers the lodging industry new possibilities in the areas of identity assurance and authentication. These relatively new technologies hold promise for practical implementation for both employee‐ and guest‐related processes. The major advantage to using this form of technology over other forms is that users do not have to carry anything around such as magnetic keycards, which can be lost, compromised or stolen. However, there are several legal, social and cost‐related challenges that must be overcome before the technology can be universally accepted and implemented in the industry.

The paper suggests that the use of biometric technology will continue to increase, and prudent hospitality executives should pay close attention to this trend so that they can adopt the technology into their operations and enjoy the benefits it offers. The paper provides insights about the technology and offers implementation guidelines for lodging technology officers. In addition, it is hoped that this paper will generate future research in the areas of adoption strategies and appropriate types of biometric technologies that are appropriate for lodging operations.

Both practitioners and educators will benefit from the information presented in this paper, as it provides insights about a relatively new form of technology. Further, the paper reviews the fundamentals of biometric technologies at the discursive level with the intent of generating future research on their application in the lodging industry.

The purpose of this study is to explore whether five factors drawn from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and UTAUT2 significantly influence customers' intention to use hotel in-room voice assistants (VAs). It further examined culture as a moderator of the relationships between the five factors and customers' intention to use.

The authors collected data from US and Singapore to examine cultural differences in customer acceptance of in-room VAs. All hypotheses were tested via structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.

The results showed that performance expectancy, social influence and hedonic motivation significantly affected customers' intentions to use in-room VAs, while effort expectancy and facilitating conditions did not. The results confirmed that culture did not play a substantial role in moderating the relationships between these factors and intentions to use.

This study established that the instrument and structural paths in the research model were equivalent across two samples from different countries. The findings may not generalize to other countries as the data arises from customers in the US and Singapore.

The findings provide important implications for hotel operators and vendors seeking to enhance customer acceptance of in-room voice technology.

This study addresses the gaps of extant research by developing and testing a research model to better understand the influential factors of in-room VA adoption within the hotel domain.

The purpose of this study is to identify an appropriate factor structure that may be utilized to effectively measure a hotel’s performance relative to service quality in a mid-scale setting. Customer perceptions of service quality in mid-scale hotels have largely been ignored; the focus of researchers has been the upscale (4-star) and luxury (5-star) segments.

A 27-item questionnaire is utilized to measure service quality with an initial sample size of over 2,500 respondents. Principle component analysis is utilized to determine the factor structure and regression analysis to determine which factors may serve as predictors of a hotel’s ability to meet customers’ expectations and to provide value.

A three-dimensional model emerged from the data, consistent with the theorizing of Rust and Oliver (1994), which includes the service product, service delivery and service environment. The service environment is the strongest predictor of a hotel’s ability to meet guests’ expectations and to provide guests with value within this context, which is inconsistent with findings in upscale and luxury hotels.

The generalizability of this research may be challenged, as the study was conducted within the context of an oceanfront resort destination dominated by leisure travelers; however, the study may be replicated in additional settings to determine if a similar bundling of service quality attributes occurs in other mid-scale settings including business hotels, as well as economy hotels.

A three-factor model may be more appropriate for assessing service quality in a mid-scale (3-star) environment. In this setting, the service environment and service product may be more important measures of service quality than service delivery. This is an important finding, as many mid-scale and select-service, as well as new mid-scale, lifestyle hotel concepts, attempt to drive profitability by deemphasizing service delivery or by utilizing technology to facilitate service delivery. These findings may also assist operators of mid-scale hotels in improving guests’ perceptions of quality, which has been found to increase perceived value and may positively influence purchase or revisit intentions (Kashyap and Bojanic, 2000).

Service quality research has been conducted, almost exclusively, in first-class (4-star) and luxury (5-star) hotels, while the majority of hotels do not fall into these categories. Although guest expectations relative to service quality may be lower in more moderately priced, mid-scale hotels, service quality remains a critical variable that influences a guest’s decision to return or recommend a hotel to others. Many travelers now utilize online reviews to minimize purchase risk by seeking information relative to service quality when selecting a hotel. Consequently, it is more important than ever that service quality is understood in hotels at all service levels. The present research contributes to filling this gap in the literature.

To explore the impact of luxury hotel brands’ technologies on guests’ perceived value enhancement and its consequences, this study aims to examine how task–technology fit (TTF) and luxury–technology fit (LTF) affect luxury hotel guests’ perceived value enhancement, satisfaction and brand loyalty.

A scenario-based online survey was conducted with existing and potential luxury hotel guests. The relationships among TTF, LTF, value enhancement, satisfaction and loyalty were examined using partial least square structural equation modeling. Moreover, the respondents were asked their preferred service agent (human staff vs technology) in a luxury hotel to further understand luxury hotel guests’ perception toward technological services in a luxury hotel setting.

The results reveal that both TTF and LTF have significant impacts on the luxury hotel’s value enhancement, and the impacts of TTF and LTF on value enhancement are moderated by the guests’ technology optimism. The findings of this study suggest that the luxury hotel brands must consider the fit between the image of their brand and the technology to increase guests’ perceived value enhancement, satisfaction and loyalty.

Applying categorization theory, this study extended the concept of brand extension to technology implementation. The findings advance the current understanding of how technology affects luxury hotel consumers’ perceived value enhancement, and how consumers’ optimism influences the impacts of TTF and LTF on value enhancement.

By examining the effects of TTF and LTF on luxury hotel guests’ perceived value enhancement, this study would shed light on luxury hotel brands’ technology implementation strategies. By understanding how TTF and LTF affect consumers’ perceived value enhancement, luxury hotel brands will be able to better design their technology implementation plans.

Even though luxury hotel brands are well known for offering high-level and personalized services through interpersonal interactions between employees and consumers, they have been actively implementing a variety of technologies to enhance guest experience and satisfaction. This study investigates the role of technological innovations in a luxury hotel setting. Particularly, this study examines how technologies improve guests’ perceived value of a luxury hotel and lead to satisfaction and loyalty.

This study examined the antecedents of technostressors as well as how customers' perceived convenience and technostressors of using a check-in/out kiosk influence their behavioral intention in a full-service hotel setting.

Using survey data collected from 630 hotel customers, hypotheses were tested via structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.

The results showed that perceived usefulness of a check-in/out kiosk had direct effects on both technostressors (i.e. work overload and role ambiguity), and that perceived ease-of-use had indirect effects on the technostressors, via perceived usefulness. The findings showed that both role ambiguity and perceived convenience significantly influenced intention to use a check-in/out kiosk. Intention to use was positively associated with intention to revisit a hotel providing the kiosk. These findings were equivalent across the younger and older groups.

Based on the findings, hotels can implement effective strategies to reduce technostressors associated with a check-in/out kiosk and focus on enhancing the factors that influence customer acceptance of the system. This is especially important given the increased emphasis on self-service technology since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research contributed to the relevant literature by developing a check-in/out kiosk acceptance model using a multi-theoretical approach, and empirically testing it within the full-service hotel domain. It fills the knowledge gap regarding the antecedents and outcomes of technostressors in the hospitality research literature by providing empirical evidence.