Evaluating hotel guest technologies : does home matter?

Purpose: With the advent of the smart home, where connectivity is facilitated by the internet of things, the provision of guest technologies in hotel service delivery has acquired greater significance. This ubiquity of technology implies that hotels need to view their technological offerings as facilitating guest’s broader lifestyles, and not just services in isolated spaces. This study aims to examine the role of “home” as a socio-technological unit, and how customers’ ownership of technologies at home affects evaluations of guest technologies at hotels. Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected from a sample of US lodging consumers using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Partial least squares, which is a component-based structural equation modeling technique with SmartPLS 3.2, is used to test the hypotheses and meet the study’s objectives. Findings: The findings show that hotel guest technologies should be of a higher standard than those at home, for guests to be satisfied with them. This relationship was robust across all hotel types, and both leisure and business visitation. Also, satisfaction with guest technologies has a relatively stronger impact on customer satisfaction in mid-scale and economy hotels compared to that in upscale and luxury hotels. Research limitations/implications: By empirically validating “home” as a frame of reference in the evaluations of hospitality experiences, it opens up the potential for future research to study how home affects the evaluation of the hospitality experience as a whole. Practical implications: Hotels need to identify viable technologies that have the potential to become mainstream, and be ahead of customers in the technology adoption curve. Originality/value: This study is the first to look at home as a conceptual entity that is integral to hospitality using a socio-psychological lens, and evaluates its impact on evaluations of guest technologies at hotels.