Keywords

1 Introduction

Service robots have been introduced to healthcare, manufacturing, business, and hospitality that are shifting how services are performed. According to Robotics Tomorrow, an online robotics trade magazine, by 2021 the professional service robotic market is predicted to reach $37 billion as industries are automating many processes for efficiency and productivity. The purpose of adding these kinds of robots to the hospitality industry is to automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks to accomplish more intellectual functions. The current and future adoption of technological innovations on service automation in hotels, restaurants, airports etc. is being used today yet, there are many factors still to be discovered about their use and guest attitudes (Ivanov et al. 2017). The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of the hotel guests the use of service robots in the hotels. The second purpose is to determine if the perceptions differ between the guests who have experienced a service robot versus not. The overall objective of this study was to gain knowledge of how customers of the hospitality industry feel about service robots and to further understand their attitudes towards service robots in hotels. In addition, the study aims to suggest a scale for the dimensions for guests’ attitudes for service robots in hotels.

2 Review of Literature

The newest and most advanced out of all is the addition of service robot usage in the hospitality and tourism industry. Service robots’ use ranges from the basic artificially intelligent chatting robots to assist with the service process to complex robot assistants to improve guests’ experience. As the number of businesses using service robots grow, it is important to understand what they will bring to the business in relation to the business itself and its customers (Belanche et al. 2020). Robotic automation’s rapid growth emerges as software systems use automation, easy process of routine tasks, structured data, and analysis of internal systems that are directly compared with human activities (Aguirre and Rodriguez 2017). The impacts of robotics on businesses and the economy have created tremendous and unstoppable changes with the new way of taking on business opportunities and challenges with using service robots (Dirican 2015). Service robots are automating and changing the current hospitality industry with their advanced technological innovations (Tuomi et al. 2020). The use of robots in hospitality facilities creates a competitive advantage for the companies in the future due to its changing consumer markets and technology growth (Ivanov and Webster 2017). Robots are comprised of different complexity functions and ranges of service which are significant to this service-based industry as the interactions and essential activities of robots differ (Murphy et al. n.d.). For service organizations, it is important to recognize and understand what role robots will play and how it will affect the business, its and customers to ensure satisfaction for all during this emerging trend (Lukanova and Ilieva 2019). Hospitality consumers’ acceptance on artificial intelligence provides a more user-friendly system with interactive technology and applicability to the hospitality industry business model (Go et al. 2020). The concept of service robots has been applied into hotel, food and beverage, and meeting and convention segments impacting the corporations, workforce, and customers with its current applications and future trends (Yang et al. 2020). The growing implementation of service robots in hotels provides a unique customer experience like nowhere else by combining human contact and artificial intelligence into one element (Fuentes-Moraleda et al. 2020). Service robots’ usage in hotels is reviewed on their performance, process, purpose, trust, and intention with the highest importance for high service performance (Park 2020). Service robots serve as a tool to improve the quality of service offered to travelers as they give an extra reason to comeback to visit for the usage of the advanced technology systems in this fast pace growing technology era (Çakar and Aykol 2020). Similarly, Lee et al. (2021) determined that hotel guests expect high level of technical performance and facilitation conditions. Furthermore, the analysis of innovativeness and optimism of technology readiness serve as critical factors in smart hotels as guests enjoy the performance of the robots, their services, and how this technology creates a positive experience for them during their stay (Kim et al. 2020). With the COVID-19 pandemic strategies to flatten the curve many drastic and quick changes have been introduced such as lockdowns, social distancing, stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions which impacted the hospitality industry as a whole. However, the usage of service robots in the hospitality industry serves as a critical factor to both physical and psychological factors of acceptance of the device and its service delivery (Gursoy and Chi 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the service robot usage in hotels has created a positive attitude and responsiveness from customers in comparison to results prior to the pandemic as the fear of human contact and social distancing grew (Kim et al. 2021; Wu et al. 2021). With the increased presence to help manage the spread of COVID-19 and reducing the spread, service robots are able to perform tasks of delivery, sanitization, safety, and security by using their artificial intelligence programming and functions (Zeng et al. 2020).

2.1 Users Versus Non-users

The attitudes of customers that used a technology versus customers that did not is a subject of many studies (Chakiso 2019; Izquierdo-Yusta et al. 2015; Seo and Bernsen 2016; Sohail and Al-Jabri 2014; Verkasalo et al. 2010). Sohail and Al-Jabri (2014) investigated the attitudes towards mobile banking between users and non-users. The study found that six out of the seven factors were significantly different between users and non-users. Chakiso (2019) also determined that four out of the five factors that affect attitudes towards mobile banking were significantly different between users and non-users. On the other hand, Verkasalo et al. (2010) investigated how attitudes differ towards smartphone applications between users and non-users. They determined that users have more positive attitudes. Based on the review of literature, we propose the following hypothesis: H: There is a significant difference in hotel guests’ attitudes towards service robots between users and non-users.

3 Methodology

3.1 Sample and Data

The data for this study was collected with a self-administered online survey using Amazon mTurk, with the total of 1152 responses from hotel guests. The use of mTurk is common in hospitality and tourism technology research (Ali et al. 2021, 2018; Birinci et al. 2018; Esfahani and Ozturk 2019; Nanu et al. 2020; Neto et al. 2020). Researchers should use several techniques to ensure that the responses from MTurk are valid (Cobanoglu et al. 2021). These include asking the same question in the survey twice and comparing the results (i. e. asking the age of the respondent in the beginning of the survey and the date of birth at the end of the survey) and removing the ones that do not match. Out of 1152 responses, 939 usable data was analyzed.

3.2 Factor Analysis

The respondents were asked to evaluate the statements about service robots on a 5-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree). Before applying the factor analysis, reverse coding was applied when necessary. The statements in the survey were adopted from different academic studies (Bowen and Morosan 2018; Chan and Tung 2019; Chun-Min et al. 2017; Ivanov et al. 2018; Kabadayi et al. 2019; Kattara and El-Said 2013; Papathanassis 2017; Solnet et al. 2019; Sun Tung and Au 2018; Chen et al. 2019; Tussyadiah et al. 2020; Van Pinxteren et al. 2019) except for statements related coronavirus pandemic. Five statements about service robots in pandemic era were created from industrial articles (Frankel 2020; Hultgren 2020; Kahn 2020; Murphy et al. 2020; Reddick 2020; Simon 2020). Reliability measures for the items are presented in Table 1. Overall reliability for 35 items was found as 0.912.

Table 1. Reliability measures
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Exploratory factor analysis results are presented in Table 2. Varimax rotation with Kaiser Normalization was applied and two items that have factor loadings lower than 0.40 have been removed. 34 items out of 35 divided into five factors that explains 55.230% of the total variance.

Table 2. Exploratory factor analysis
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Table 3. Independent sample t test
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The first factor was named as Advantages that contains 14 statements related to possible advantages of service robots. The second factor was named as Attitudes that includes eight statements about respondents’ attitudes towards service robots. The third factor was named as Disadvantages that contains six statements related to possible disadvantages of service robots. The fourth factor was name as Pandemic Related that has four statements related to service robots’ usage during coronavirus pandemic. The last factor was named as Fear that contains two statements about fear towards service robots.

3.3 Hypothesis Testing: The Impact of Utilization of Service Robots on Guests’ Attitudes.

An independent t test was conducted on the factor obtained in the study between the guests who have used or seen a service robot in a hotel versus not. Table 3 shows except for advantages of services robots, all other factors differ between these two groups.

Table 3 shows that guests who have experience with a service robot or have seen one, have lower level of fear (mean = 3.62) versus guests who have zero experience (mean = 4.07). On the other hand, guests who have not used or seen a service robot have more positive attitudes towards service robots (mean = 4.02) and think more positively about service robots’ advantages in the pandemic era (mean = 4.15). Additionally, the guests who have used or seen a service robot think more positively about robots’ disadvantages (mean = 3.36). Finally, there is no difference between two groups regarding the advantages of the service robots.

4 Conclusion

With the purpose of this study being to identify and examine perceptions of the use of robots in hotels as perceived by hotel guests, the conclusion has resulted in positive attitudes and perceptions towards the use of robots in the hospitality industry. The data gathered and analyzed was separated into 5 categories on a scale from one strongly disagree to five strongly agree. The five categories included: advantages, attitudes, disadvantages, pandemic related, and fear. As the data and results show, the advantages of using robots for a reliable and functional addition to guest experience scored the highest along with the pandemic use of robots for safety and cleanliness which has created a new impact on the industry. The attitudes on robots were positive with a few negative aspects of unknowingness of what robots can do and how that will sift the industry. The disadvantages of robots exemplified the worry of the limited functions and services robots can perform and that worry of too much technology usage. Following the disadvantages of robots, fear of job replacement and lack of human interactions were a negative aspect as well. According to the independent sample t test results, the guests who have direct or indirect experience with a service robot more negative attitudes and more negative opinions about usage a robot in pandemic era but think more positively about service robots’ disadvantages. Choi et al. (2020) also argued why the hotel guests continually show strong resistance to receive service from a robot. The hotel guests defense the core of the hospitality industry which is human touch. The results also show that using or seeing a service robot in a hotel environment help to reduce fear towards them. Similarly, Zhong et al. (2020) found that the people who watched a video about service robot working in a hotel, showed higher intention to book a room in the hotel. Interestingly, no difference was determined between two groups when it came to the advantages of the robots. This study has several limitations like many others. The first limitation is the sample size. Even though the sample size is suitable to conduct the analyses, larger sample group may provide more generalizable results. The second limitation is the question about the service robot existence in the hotels where the respondent stayed. The authors did not ask whether there was a service robot in the hotel. The third limitation is the ignorance of the respondents who have not experience with a service robot. The authors assumed that the respondents who had zero experience with a service robot might have enough knowledge about it to complete the questionnaire. Despite some negative aspects of robots in the industry, many positive aspects and advantages arise from the study exemplifying the unique and innovative technological advancements robots can bring to the industry. The efficiency, convenience, information, experiences, features, and interactions will all create a robotic experience like no other for the industry and its guests. The perceptions of the use of robots in hotels as perceived by hotel guests is very positive with exciting innovative experiences. Previous studies mainly focused to answer the similar questions, but sample of the studies mostly have not used or seen a service robot before. More research in the hospitality context is needed with the participants who have experienced with a service robot to obtain more detailed insights. The results showed that there are significant differences between users and non-users of service robots in hotels. There is more research needed in this area to understand how the use of a service robot influences the attitudes and behaviors of customers.