The myth of contactless hospitality service : customers’ willingness to pay

Abstract

Contactless hospitality services are an expensive endeavor with an uncertain return on investment. This study explores these services from the perspective of hotel guests’ willingness to pay (WTP). To this end, 10 discrete choice experiments were conducted on 1,939 Chinese hotel guests to test a hybrid choice model. The findings indicate that hotel guests’ WTP is influenced by hotel attributes, hotel scale, customer demographics, travel-related variables, technology readiness, and health concerns. Generally, there is significant heterogeneity in the WTP for different contactless amenities, such as for contactless room entrance, contactless payment system, contactless elevator service, robotic services, a smart room, and contactless front desk services. This study contributes to the knowledge on technology implementation in the hospitality industry and the WTP for hotel amenities. Furthermore, it guides hotel practitioners to invest smartly and rationally in contactless services.