Search results

This paper aims to answer questions pertinent to whether or not services provided by smart hotels are really what customers are looking for, as well as to ascertain what are some unintended experiences guests may encounter. In essence, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the field to acknowledge the paradox of smart service.

This inquiry adopts a qualitative approach with data-driven from online customer reviews and semistructured interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken to interpret review comments.

Results point to a new phenomenon, which is coined as the smartness paradox. In particular, customers on one hand enjoy an array of smart-infused experiences that jointly offer patrons a sense of a futuristic lifestyle. On the other hand, smart devices superimpose a number of hindrances that bring guests dismay and annoyance.

This investigation brings smart service failure to the fore to highlight several key failure themes that could jeopardize the entire operation with debased customers’ satisfaction and loyalty inclination.

The smartness-paradox framework used in the present inquiry entails both approach and avoidance consequences customers enact depending on their smart experiences.

This study aims to unlock a ritual chain mechanism that promotes socio-mental (or socio-psychological) resilience. This study draws on interaction ritual chains theory and the concept of transformative service to answer the question of how people could be inspired toward an elevated level of group solidarity, emotional energy, morality and, thus, socio-mental resilience.

This study took a qualitative approach resting upon online reviews and observations from an augmented food festival about hot pot delicacies dedicated to medical workers fighting hard amid the early coronavirus outbreak.

The results of this study point to four primary ritual outcomes (e.g. emotional energy, group solidarity, symbols of relationships and standards of morality) along with a two-tier micro–macro socio-mental resilience sustainability paradigm.

Empirical findings from this study could help operators to justify their transformative initiatives as means for customers to replenish their depleted physical and mental resources.

This inquiry presents new nuances to interaction ritual chains. This study also extends the transformative role of hospitality services to accentuate a linkage among individuals, communities and the society.

Have you been to a smart restaurant, and how were its services? A common limitation of hospitality studies stems from the lack of research on how service quality is shaped within smart technology. This study aims to fill this literature void not merely to reiterate the importance of technology but also to recast service quality through the lens of information technology. It synthesizes the 5-S model of smart service quality (AKA SSQ) as a new conceptualization of service quality application in smart hospitality contexts such as smart restaurants.

This study undertook a qualitative research design based on theoretical synthesis from service quality, information technology and attention restoration. Drawing from online review comments and semistructured interviews from smart restaurants, the authors improvised the SSQ model to identify the essence of smart service in smart dining establishments.

“5-S” reflects an extension of the literature to denote a new SSQ abstraction pertinent to s-servicescape, s-assurance, s-responsiveness, s-reliability and s-empathy. A nomological network was posited to better understand the importance of smart design and consequence of SSQ.

The emergence of smart dining gives rise to smart restaurants, which puts technology at center stage. As consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with self-service technology, auto-payment and ordering systems and robotic services, technology in foodservice will continue to play an essential role to better serve diners. Geared with advanced innovations and intelligent devices, smart restaurants are now more than mere eateries. It is a trend and a lifestyle.

This novel SSQ concept adds new nuances to the literature by acknowledging the technological essence in today’s hospitality industry. By integrating smart technology into the service quality paradigm, the authors are able to observe several interesting behaviors exhibited during smart dining, including tech-induced restoration, which opens a new avenue to understand how attention restoration could be attained through immersion in a technologically advanced setting. By synthesizing theoretical essence from service quality, attention restoration and information technology, the authors are able to create a new dialog that should warrant a forum of discussion in future studies.

This study aims to move beyond the current understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to propose the concept of just-in-time (JIT) CSR as a metaphor that reflects hospitality operators’ endeavors to expedite socially responsible measures to both internal and external organizational stakeholders during times when functional and emotional supports are urgently needed.

This research used a qualitative approach in two studies. Study 1 engaged a media analysis to better grasp the knowledge of the research problem at hand. Study 2 involved interviews from stakeholders to assess their emotions and perceptions of meanings of major contents discerned from the first study.

This research highlights a process in which operators’ CSR practices (e.g. for business practices, for organizational strategy and for stakeholder well-being) during the COVID-19 crisis are imbued with connotative meanings (e.g. place-as-safety, place-as-partnership and place-as-warmth) that ultimately give shape to three core outcomes (e.g. individual rejoinder, brand resonance and societal resilience).

While JIT CSR is not an antidote for all devastations caused by COVID-19, it is posited as a needed mechanism that operators could use to ameliorate the situation and to go beyond their own stake to bring a broader array of societal benefits to humanity.

This research underscores how hospitality operators expedite crisis responses to the pandemic, and how their societal objectives transform the image of a place from a commercial venue into a place imbued with meaning associated with safety, partnership and warmth.

The adaptation hypothesis suggests that gambling participation would gradually decline after an initial exposure to this activity. While this hypothesis was tested in pathological gambling among residents in Western countries, the present inquiry explores the hypothesis in a tourism context.

This research is focused on the Mainland Chinese gamblers. Convenience sampling was used. Data were collected outside participating casinos and at major attractions. A total of 498 valid responses were collected.

By assessing changes of the Mainland Chinese gambling perceptions (e.g. excitement and fallacy) and behaviors, results point to visitor gamblers' decrease in gambling excitement and fallacy as well as budget to income ratio.

By assessing changes of the Mainland Chinese gambling perceptions and behaviors, this research aims to contribute to the literature by demonstrating whether the Chinese gamblers have adapted and hence, are more rational about this recreational activity.

The study aims to propose a triadic interaction model to assess the effect of customer–customer (C2C), employee–customer and robot–customer interactions on customer voluntary performance in the context of smart dining.

An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was used. First, a quantitative study surveyed Foodom patrons to assess the impact of triadic interactions on customer voluntary performance. The mediating role of trust and social support and the moderating effect of the need to belong were also explored. A post hoc study (Study 2) analyzed online comments to validate and complement the survey findings.

While all interactions promote social support, the C2C interactions significantly correlate with customer trust. Moreover, customer voluntary performance is influenced by both customer trust and social support, while the need to belong remains as a moderator. Findings from Study 2 consolidate and enrich the relationships identified in Study 1.

This research reveals that patrons in smart dining still value interactions with employees and other diners. It enriches the stream of work on interaction quality by illuminating how different types of interactions could co-create value for customers, subsequently fostering voluntary behavior in smart dining contexts.

This research explores how patrons perceive interactions with robots in smart hospitality, highlighting their impact on trust and social support. It also sheds light on how interactions among robots, employees and customers influence customer voluntary performance, emphasizing the role of the need to belong in moderating relationships in this setting.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic response is not only devastating nations and economies across the globe but it is also severely disrupting the event industry, with government and health authorities forcing many events to be postponed or cancelled. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prospective attendees’ emotional responses to cancelled events. This study draws upon grief cycle theory to articulate different layers of the grief process in the event domain of inquiry.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament was selected as the research context. Taking user-generated messages from Twitter, this study first performed content analysis to organize lexical patterns into categories and higher-order themes based on the grief cycle. It also performed social network analyses using UCINET to illustrate how different grief phases are inter-related.

Results not only point to attendees’ self-expression manifested through a continuum of denial, anger, bargaining and acceptance but they also reveal a three-layer hierarchy of grief, namely, event-related, socio-politics-related and crisis-related. The network analysis further illustrates how grief phases are tied into a complex network of grief messages.

This study advances the event literature by improving knowledge about attendees’ emotional responses to cancelled events. It increases our understanding of the grieving process in the aftermath of COVID-19. The proposed triple grief cycle helps advance the literature by showcasing how voices from prospective attendees represent three pillars of grief hierarchy. The findings also underscore the emotional crisis of the COVID-19 aftermath.

This study draws on the service-dominant (S-D) logic paradigm to examine value co-creation and co-destruction. As these phenomena are driven by positive and negative “customer-to-customer” (C2C) interactions, this paper aims to examine their influence on tourist perceptions of service quality and how they shape affective responses toward tourism and hospitality services and brand loyalty.

Following a comprehensive literature review, the authors used convenience sampling to gather a large sample of tourists at Shanghai Disneyland, a recently opened and already popular international tourism attraction. Structural equation modeling was used to test for direct and moderated relationships.

The findings indicated that positive and negative C2C interactions have significant though differential impacts on customer responses. Furthermore, it was found that visitor arousal mediated the relationship between service quality and brand loyalty. Prior experience was identified as a moderator in the co-creation and co-destruction process during service encounters.

This paper is one of the first to examine the concept of co-destruction in the tourism and hospitality context. It contributes to the literature by demonstrating the merits of proactive service provision by tourism operators, taking account of both the co-creation and co-destruction of value.

The study extends the literature by taking account of both positive and negative C2C interactions when examining co-creation and co-destruction in the context of service encounters. It also contributes to knowledge by assessing the asymmetry of such interactions in the context of the customer experience.

Why would a hospitality or tourism enterprise’s talent program backfire to demotivate interns from engaging in their jobs? This study aim to synthesize theoretical strands from the self-determination theory, person–environment fit theory and conservation of resources theory to investigate the predictors of perceived person–job fit and how such a fit causes changes in interns’ job motivation over time.

A four-wave longitudinal study was conducted. The four waves of data obtained from over 251 interns in China were analyzed using latent growth curve modeling.

The findings demonstrate that abusive co-worker treatment moderated the impact of perceived negative social status and perceived overqualification on perceived person–job fit. Moreover, perceived person–job fit is a significant predictor of the initial level of job motivation and flattens the decrease in job motivation over time. These findings demonstrate that interns’ job motivation generally decreased over time, and perceived person–job fit may help dampen the change trajectory of job motivation.

This study contributes to the practice of education and organizations in hospitality and tourism management by advocating for better interventions to improve interns’ work experience and motivations. Also, organizations can create team-building opportunities and promote teamwork that contributes to the formation of cohesive relationships and improve personal bonding.

This longitudinal inquiry conducted in China underscores the perils of hospitality/tourism internship by synthesizing a framework based on the theoretical strands germane to person–environment fit, resource conservation and self-determination. It uncovers the dark side of internship – not only due to mismanaged internship experience, but also because it could backfire to create a demotivational spiral that may ultimately drive potential talents away from hospitality/tourism organizations and industry.

This study aims to explore the role of social media visual posts (known as foodstagramming) on restaurant visit intention. Drawing on the heuristic–systematic model and normative focus theory, this research introduces a framework that assesses the effects of key foodstagramming attributes – vicarious expression, aesthetic appeal and post popularity – and the mediating roles of goal relevance and mimicking desire, in the process.

Structural equation modelling was performed to test the proposed model using a sample of tourists (n = 377) and residents (n = 341). Multi-group analysis was performed to compare the differences between these groups.

Results reveal that mimicking desire and goal relevance influence restaurant visit intention; however, mimicking desire has a stronger influence than goal relevance. Little difference was found between the tourist and the resident groups in the proposed relationships, except that vicarious expression positively influences mimicking desire in the tourist group but not in the resident group.

This study guides restauranteurs and social media influencers (foodstagrammers). It shows that consumers value the textual content and aesthetic appeal of photos over the popularity of a post. It also indicates that vicarious expression is more important for tourists than for residents.

This research advances social media marketing literature by proposing a new information processing framework. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first studies to explore the impact of visual post attributes on individual decision-making behaviours through socially acceptable norms.