By Fran Worrall
The hospitality industry is increasingly dependent on technology to enhance the guest journey. Indeed, in recent years, hotels have allocated enormous financial investments to the implementation of solutions—from mobile keys to self-service kiosks–designed to streamline the delivery of guest services. Technology is changing the face of the industry, but at what cost? In many cases, it enhances the guest journey; yet in other cases, it introduces challenges that frustrate consumers and lead to dissatisfaction.
Last year, Samuel Lee, Ph.D., Mehmet Erdem, Ph.D., Eda Anlamlier, Ph.D., Chih-Chien Chen, Ph.D., Billy Bai, Ph.D., and LeAnn Putney, Ph.D., all faculty members at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), conducted a study that examined the anxiety hospitality consumers experience as a consequence of technology use. The research paper that followed, entitled Technostress and Hotel Guests: A Mere Hurdle or a Major Friction Point?, explores the concept of technostress in consumer behavior, namely hotel guests, as opposed to stress experienced by employees who are forced to adopt new technologies as part of their jobs.
Hotel Online recently interviewed two of the researchers, Lee and Erdem, both professors at UNLV’s William. F. Harrah College of Hospitality. In the first part of this two-part series, we talk with Lee, who led the research team, about the study’s findings. Next week, we will discuss with Erdem the implications of the study and the ways in which hoteliers can use its findings to reduce or eliminate technology-induced stress.
HO: What was the primary objective of the study?
LEE: The overall objective was to identify stress-causing guest service technologies and illustrate the effect of technostress on guest satisfaction. In the hospitality industry, technology is touted as the solution to almost every problem, but we must be judicious about adopting it. Essentially, this study is the first to examine how technostress in hotel guests can negatively affect their experiences.
HO: Is there something inherently different about the hospitality industry’s use of guest-facing solutions? After all, every industry is using customer-facing technology.
LEE: Yes, the hospitality industry is unique in that it focuses so intently on the guest and the guest experience; and, in doing so, hotels tend to purchase technology with that goal in mind. Yet, a lot of programmers and app developers are not hoteliers, and they often make incorrect assumptions about what hotel guests want and require. Another thing the hospitality industry is trying to do is introduce more anthropomorphism into the mix, such as robots at the front desk. Some of that is okay, but there’s a point where it just becomes creepy. Finally, when apps don’t work in hospitality, it’s much more impactful in the hospitality sector than it is anywhere else. The negative fallout can affect the entire guest stay.
HO: Can you elaborate on the concept of technostress as related to hotel guests?
LEE: We’ve identified four techno-stressors for hotel guests. The first is techno-overload, which refers to the ways in which technology sometimes introduces difficulty into the guest experience. The second, techno-invasion, is the feeling that technology is interrupting the guest experience, such as check-out reminders that are too frequent. The third stressor, techno-complexity, refers to the feelings of incompetence that people experience with respect to their technology skills. This often relates to challenges experienced by guests who are trying to connect to Wi-Fi or log into streaming services. And, finally, there’s techno-uncertainty, which is the discomfort guests feel when new hotel technology is introduced, such as app updates.
HO: When are guests most likely to experience technostress?
LEE: Guests can experience technostress anytime they interact with guest-facing technology. Also, guests can feel anxious whenever there’s a concern about privacy. People worry about being recorded, for example, or about information being attached to their guest profiles.
HO: How did you conduct the study?
LEE: Without getting too technical, we employed the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TMSC), which takes a long-term perspective to stress as opposed to a short-term response-stimulus approach. This model is especially well-suited to examining technostress, because technostress isn’t a singular experience but rather an accumulation of technology-induced stressors throughout the guest stay.
The study had three phases. The first surveyed 134 respondents using a free- association method. We asked the following question: What comes to mind when you think about a negative hotel experience? And we gave respondents limited time to provide the answer, as we wanted unfiltered responses. The top three negative experiences were problems with Wi-Fi, smartphone apps/key cards and smart TVs, in that order.
In the second phase of the study, we pulled online reviews—more than 3 million in all—from every three-star, four-star and five-star hotel in the United States and coded them based on technologies mentioned. The same three negative experiences came up again. With Wi-Fi, the issues were speed and price. People complained about having to pay for Wi-Fi, and they complained about it being too slow. Next, consumers complained about smart phone apps and digital keys that didn’t work. And finally, guests were frustrated at smart TVs that didn’t allow them to access the content they wanted.
The third phase of the study was an experiment with 991 respondents, separated into two groups. We gave the first group a scenario of technology-related errors during the guest stay and the second group a scenario without the errors. We then measured stress, satisfaction and delight. Not surprisingly, it was clear that technology errors do, indeed, cause stress that negatively affects guest satisfaction.
HO: Is technostress only experienced by older people? Or can it be a problem for younger guests too?
LEE: There’s an assumption that Millennials and Gen Z consumers are always comfortable with technology. Yet more than half of our respondents were younger than 45, and many of them stated that they weren’t always confident using technology. Also, most of the technology that younger people use today is designed to be easy and intuitive, which means the disappointment gap is even more pronounced when a hotel solution doesn’t work properly, whether it’s Wi-Fi, smart phone apps, streaming services or something else.
HO: If you had to provide one or two key takeaways from this study, would what they be?
LEE: Although technology can be beneficial, hoteliers should always consider the negative as well as the positive impacts it can bring. Adopting new solutions without critically evaluating their implementation can cause unnecessarily negative experiences, poor reviews and damage to the brand. Also, hotels must have a plan in place when the technology fails, because it will at some point. Hotels must perform service recovery in a way that doesn’t leave guests dissatisfied.
Next week, Mehmet Erdem will talk about the implications of the technostress study and discuss ways hoteliers can reduce or eliminate technology-induced anxiety.
Read Part 2.
