Description
Purpose - Service robots are increasingly used in hospitality, addressing staff shortages and enhancing guest experiences (Kim et al., 2022; Pitardi et al., 2022; Van Doorn et al., 2023; Wirtz et al., 2018). This surge in automation, particularly robots, offers solutions to labor shortages, with 97% of US hotels reporting such issues (AHLA, 2022). Studies are contributing insights into hospitality robots mainly based on hypothetical and conceptual work. There is a need for real-life field studies to complement the discussion on the impact of service robots in hospitality. Linking to the ongoing academic debate (Becker & Jaakkola, 2020; Kim & So, 2022; Odekerken-Schröder et al., 2022; Pijls et al., 2017; Wirtz et al., 2018), we compare human and robotic service agents and their effect on previously established relationships between social presence, hospitality experience, familiarity with service robots, guest satisfaction with touchpoint experiences and touchpoint revisiting intention.
Methods - We designed a real-life field study. We set up a service robot (i.e., hotel concierge robot) in a real-life reception area. The reception area is located in a hospitality venue on a university campus in the Netherlands, connected to a 24-bedroom hotel. The deployed robot is capable of taking over tasks of information provision in hotels. We designed two alternative scenarios for guests to experience the touchpoint of information provision: 1.) interacting with a human frontline employee, or 2.) interacting with the concierge robot.
We conducted a quantitative online survey, validated and refined by five hospitality researchers and three service robot experts. A team of two incognito researchers at the venue invited guests to participate in the survey after they interacted with either human staff or the concierge robot, ensuring unbiased real-world conditions. Our study sampled 200 guests from a hospitality venue, who interacted with either a frontline employee or a concierge robot for information provision.
We used validated measures which have been empirically tested in previous studies. For independent variable perceived social presence of technological innovations, we built on Gefen & Straub (1997, 2004). We adapted Pijls et al.'s (2017) scale for hospitality experience. We further measure familiarity with hospitality service robots. To measure dependent variables of competitiveness, we built on items proposed by a.) Angelova and Zekiri (2011) to capture guests' satisfaction with the touchpoint interaction, and b.) Pullman and Gross (2004) to capture guests' intention to revisit the touchpoint.
The theoretical model was tested with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with the SmartPLS 4 software (Sarstedt et al., 2020).
Findings - Our results reveal indifferent effects between human and robot agents in affecting guest satisfaction, which in turn influences the likelihood of revisiting. Contrary to expectations, this suggests that service robots can efficiently replace human staff without compromising guest experiences, offering cost savings and addressing staff shortages. This provides empirical support to previous theoretical claims about the economic advantages of robots in hospitality, marking a significant contribution to the debate on service robots' role in enhancing service productivity and hospitality business competitiveness. Our study has limitations in that we studied the isolated touchpoint of information provision, opening the call for researching the spectrum of different touchpoints. Further, research should investigate underlying factors determining guests’ choice behaviour.
Our findings imply that concierge robots can be implemented successfully alongside human reception staff for information provision. These insights provide opportunities to run a reception with fewer human staff, tackling the issue of current personnel shortages and socio-demographic shifts.The study is original in that we compare the effect of robotic vs. human service agents in a real-life hospitality setting, in which guests actually interact with robots.
References
AHLA. (2022, June 30). As 97% Of Surveyed Hotels Report Staffing Shortages, AHLA Foundation Expands Recruitment Campaign. https://www.ahla.com/news/97-surveyed-hotels-report-staffing-shortages-ahla-foundation-expands-recruitment-campaign
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