Search results

Growing health concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic have led guests to focus on various aspects of hotel cleanliness. This study aims to investigate whether customers’ perceived importance of hotel cleanliness during their stay depends on local pandemic severity and moderators of the pandemic–cleanliness relationship.

Based on TripAdvisor data from 26,519 reviews in 2020 for 2,024 hotels across the USA, this study evaluated the importance of hotel cleanliness using the estimated coefficient of the cleanliness score in a regression of overall hotel rating scores.

Results of a multilevel ordered logit model confirmed that a more difficult local pandemic situation rendered cleanliness more important during hotel stays. Additionally, the effect of the pandemic was more pronounced among specific groups: men and travelers with more expertise, and guests staying in hotels without COVID-19 protocols for linen cleaning, with a lower average rating, with a larger size and in a more urbanized location.

This study represents a pioneering effort to assess how pandemics shape people’s (perceived) importance of cleanliness during hotel stays based on revealed data. Despite potential managerial relevance, a number of the moderating variables included in this study, such as traveler expertise and hotel location, have never been studied within the context of cleanliness perceptions during a pandemic.

Drawing on anthropomorphism and the stereotype content model, this study aims to explore the impacts of robot anthropomorphism on hotel guests’ word of mouth and continuous usage intention through perceived warmth and competence. This study also investigates the moderating effects of guests’ expertise.

A total of 524 valid data was collected with Chinese hotel guest through an online survey. Data were analyzed by using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that robot anthropomorphism positively affects perceived warmth and competence. Perceived warmth positively affects guests’ word of mouth and continuous usage intention, while perceived competence only positively influences guests’ continuous usage intention. The findings further show that guest expertise weakens the positive relationship between robot anthropomorphism and perceived warmth and competence.

This study advances robot service literature by integrating the stereotype content model with robot anthropomorphism in exploring hotel guests’ perceptions on service robots. This study also discovers the vital boundary role of guest characteristics in human–robot interaction. This study provides valuable information for hoteliers to design and adopt better robots for optimal guest experiences.

基于拟人化和刻板印象内容模型, 本研究探讨了机器人拟人化通过感知温暖和感知能力对酒店客人的口碑和持续使用意向的影响。此外, 本研究也探讨了客人专业知识的调节作用。

通过在线调查问卷, 我们共收集了来自中国酒店客人的524份有效数据, 并采用结构方程模型对这些数据进行了分析。

研究结果表明, 机器人拟人化积极影响感知温暖和感知能力。感知温暖会对客人的口碑和持续使用意向产生积极影响, 而感知能力只对客人的持续使用意向产生积极影响。研究结果进一步表明, 客人的专业知识会削弱机器人拟人化与感知温暖和能力之间的积极关系。

为了探索酒店客人对服务机器人的感知（状况/情况）, 本研究将机器人拟人化因素整合到刻板印象内容模型中, 其结果推动了机器人服务研究的发展。本研究还发现了客人特征在人机互动中的重要边界作用。本研究为酒店经营者设计和采用更好的机器人以获得最佳的客人体验提供了有价值的参考。

Se recopiló datos válidos de un total de 524 clientes de hoteles chinos mediante una encuesta en línea. Los datos fueron analizados mediante un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

Basándose en el antropomorfismo y en el modelo de contenido estereotipado, este estudio explora el impacto del antropomorfismo de los robots en el boca a boca de los clientes del hotel y en la intención de uso continuado a través de la calidez y la competencia percibidas. El estudio investiga también los efectos moderadores de la experiencia de los huéspedes.

Los resultados indican que el antropomorfismo del robot afecta positivamente a la calidez y a la competencia percibidas. La calidez percibida influye positivamente en el boca a boca y en la intención de uso continuado de los huéspedes, mientras que la competencia percibida sólo influye positivamente en la intención de uso continuado de los huéspedes. Los resultados muestran, además, que la experiencia del cliente debilita la relación positiva entre el antropomorfismo del robot y la percepción de calidez y de competencia.

Este estudio supone un avance en la literatura sobre robots de servicio al integrar el modelo de contenido estereotipado con el antropomorfismo de los robots, en la exploración de las percepciones de los huéspedes de hoteles sobre los robots de servicio. Este estudio también muestra el papel vital que desempeñan las características de los huéspedes en la interacción humano-robot. El estudio proporciona información valiosa para que los hoteleros diseñen y adopten mejores robots para ofrecer experiencias óptimas a los huéspedes.

Teaching and learning online during the Covid-19 pandemic has forced university instructors to consider online alternatives to the classroom. It is possible to facilitate students’ learning in the digital environment in similar ways to the traditional face-to-face classroom. The inclusion of e-guests in the digital learning space presents one such opportunity. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of e-guests in online learning.

This paper presents a case study, following a postgraduate class and the role of the e-guest in students’ synchronous online learning.

E-guests facilitated student learning. Their approaches to learning ranged from slides to discussions. Students responded well to this method of learning.

There is potential for enhancing student learning through the inclusion of e-guests, who bring their expertise to the classroom. E-guests from different regions offer students an opportunity to learn from specialists they would not necessarily have access to in the traditional classroom.

E-guests offer one important potential means of enriching online teaching.

Quality in foodservices has become essential, and new methodological ways of determining service quality enable a better representation of service processes and help to increase revisits. This paper focuses on the foodservice context and explores the relationship between staff-related service dimensions, atmosphere, food quality and revisit in a full-service setting.

This study combines an often neglected mystery guest approach with partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to shed more light on customers' service perceptions. The mystery guest approach has been updated with a digitally supported smartphone questionnaire (e-mystery) that provides more reliable results since previous measurements experienced difficulties of feasibility in time-limited settings (N = 247).

The findings of this study confirm the direct effects of the service quality dimensions reliability, attentiveness and atmosphere on revisit intention and highlight the mediating role of food quality. In detail, the findings showed significant results for service employees' reliability and attentiveness and underlined the role of atmosphere for revisit intention.

The contribution of this paper supplements that mystery guest approaches represent a reliable alternative to convenience sampling, especially in combination with a digitally supported questionnaire (e-mystery). Thereby, this paper suggests the further application of e-mystery for the hospitality and tourism industry. In terms of implications, this study highlights the importance of securing food quality by fostering specialized schools and training programs for career starters. Since the findings stress the importance of service quality and atmosphere, managers need to ensure that employees are trained in culturally sensitive communication and services to excel in service-related dimensions.

Despite the importance of hosts who contribute to the success of accommodation sharing through sharing underutilized space with guests, current literature sheds little light on what exactly incentivizes hosts to grow their properties. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of multifaceted motivations including financial benefits, online social interaction and membership seniority and their interplay on hosts’ multiple listing behavior.

The study is instantiated on real-world business data collected from an accommodation-sharing platform in China. The data set includes 3,199 observations of 252 multi-listing hosts in Beijing who managed 815 properties from September 2012 to October 2016.

The study discloses that financial benefits, online social interaction and membership seniority significantly incentivize hosts to list multiple properties on the accommodation-sharing platform. In particular, the social incentive is the most important driver among the three. With a 1 per cent increase in online social interactions, the number of properties operated by a host would increase by 13.5 per cent. While the financial benefits and online social interaction motivate hosts to engage in the multi-listing behavior, such effects are significantly mitigated as the membership seniority increases.

This study adds to the extant literature a unique yet less researched perspective of supply expansion driven by hosts. It also provides important practical implications for managing multiple properties for a healthy and viable accommodation-sharing community.

While a majority of the extant research on the sharing economy primarily takes a consumer-related perspective, this study addresses a different and original topic about hosts’ multiple-listing behavior that drives the supply of accommodation sharing. It is a first empirical investigation of the increase of accommodation sharing supply with host motivations explained.

Due to their very different contexts, the responses made by property hosts to online reviews can differ from those posted by hotel managers. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the responding behavior of hosts on peer-to-peer property rental platforms.

This study applied a comprehensive framework based on the theory of planned behavior. Empirical models are constructed based on 89,967 guest reviews with their associated responses to reveal the responding pattern of property hosts.

Unlike hotel managers, property hosts are more likely to reply to positive than to negative reviews; moreover, when they do choose to respond to negative reviews, they are likely to do so negatively, in a “tit-for-tat” way. This study also finds that one reason for the difference of responding patterns between property hosts and hotel managers is the hosts’ lack of experience of consumer relationship management and service recovery.

This study provides a good start point for future theoretical development regarding effective responding strategy on peer-to-peer property rental platforms, as well as some useful implications for practitioners.

This study is an early attempt to analyze the impact of the particularity of emerging platforms on the responding behavior of service providers based on a comprehensive conceptual framework and empirical model thus provides a good starting point for the further investigation of effective response strategies on these emerging platforms.

This paper attempts to identify the emerging themes that can shed light on the sales and marketing issues and challenges being faced by global hospitality organizations.

The paper utilizes a multi‐method approach for data collection. A thorough literature review, a focus group and personal interviews were conducted to explore the themes and construct a tentative thematic web. Publicly accessible secondary data in the form of customer reviews were drawn from world's leading web site – Tripadvisor.com. A total of 702 reviews of the customers of luxury hotels from the world's top two tourist destinations – France and USA – were analyzed, using thematic analysis. Customers' perspective is juxtaposed with industry's perspective to offer insights on the sales and marketing issues and challenges being faced by hospitality organizations globally.

Marketing challenges, namely personalization/customization of services, service management, creating a strong parent brand, under‐utilization of the social media and diverting tourists from heritage properties, are identified as some of the key emerging sales and marketing issues and challenges faced by the global hospitality industry.

Analytically identified themes in this research paper provide valuable insights on issues and challenges related to sales and marketing for the policy makers and practitioners from the hospitality industry. Findings are based on the analyses of real customer data from the world's leading tourist destinations. This makes the paper very valuable for both practitioners in the hospitality industry around the globe as well as for academic researchers working in this area.

This work is unique in nature because the authors did find any scholarly work addressing such an important issue. Use of real customer data and thematic analysis – a widely used qualitative analytic method for a scholarly study – in the hospitality field, enhances its value and contributes to the field by opening up avenues for further scholarly explorations and investigations.

This study aims to present a novel examination of actor value formation (AVF) in the sharing economy by uncovering its key dimensions (i.e. information seeking, personal interaction and feedback) at each stage of Airbnb consumption. Using multi-source data, how the key dimensions of AVF affect consumers’ evaluative judgment capturing the key aspects of consumption experiences (i.e. communication quality, value for money and overall evaluations) was empirically tested.

This study adopted a triangulated, multi-study approach to test and validate the hypotheses. In Study 1, the authors analyzed 586,778 online reviews through deductive and inductive approaches to determine how three AVF dimensions could be captured and examine these dimensions’ effects on consumers’ evaluative judgments. In Study 2, an online survey was adopted to improve the reliability and validity of findings.

This study identified positive and negative outcomes of AVF. The results also revealed which AVF dimensions significantly led to communication quality and value for money, which in turn influenced consumers’ overall evaluations. The findings further provided robust support for the mediating role of value for money as a mechanism in the relationships between AVF and overall evaluations across the two studies.

This study contributes to the literature by empirically identifying the three key dimensions of AVF in each consumption stage and subsequently testing a conceptual model using different data, research methods and analytical techniques to cross-validate the results. The authors also extended the scope of AVF by integrating both positive and negative aspects in the context of Airbnb.

While the integration of mobile and eTextbook technologies is rapidly growing throughout higher education learning environments, these technologies are often challenging to implement across the university landscape. Professional development tailored to these fluid and evolving technologies is essential to supporting effective classroom integration. The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate a special interest group approach to professional development regarding mobile and eTextbook technologies implemented by one university in the USA. Issues such as recruitment of members, selection of face-to-face and online spaces, and curriculum design are addressed.

To evaluate effectiveness, a survey was given to the participants that asked about sense of community, perceived increase in knowledge and teaching practices, and overall satisfaction with the experience.

The interrelated factors of sense of community, knowledge, and teaching practices were identified as valuable, along with group organization. Survey results revealed that participants highly valued the opportunity to share best practices with others they typically would not, and benefitted from the expertise of guest speakers. Online spaces were found to serve as a repository of on-demand resources and dissemination of information, while face-to-face meetings capitalized on interactivity and nurtured community. Sharing the work of the members with the university and beyond was critical to incentivizing members to produce, and also built further professional networks. The planning team identified a tension between encouraging active involvement from instructors and offering it in convenient ways given their other commitments.

Although this is a single case, this analysis suggests generalizable strategies that may create and sustain a community interested in mobile and eTextbook technologies.

Recent reports focussing on the future of the global hospitality industry have identified that the key issues for management include the impact of new technology, a lack of availability of capital investment and increasing concern for the future of the environment. The hotel financial manager has emerged as being of major importance in maintaining the profitability of the unit and the company and plays an increasingly influential role as part of the management team. They must now identify the challenges for the future within their own working environment and develop the technological and personal skills necessary to manage in this new age.