Mobile applications in the hospitality industry

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine customer intentions to download mobile applications in the hospitality industry. Even though major hospitality companies offer the mobile applications, many customers have not utilized them. The results showed what encouraged customers to download mobile applications in the hospitality industry.Design/methodology/approachThe Technology Acceptance Model was applied for this research to explain customer intentions. College students were the target population of this study because they understand and adopt the technology well. Therefore, mobile applications will become a popular way to purchase goods and services when university students will have purchasing power.FindingsEven though major hospitality companies offer mobile applications, more than a half of respondents responded that they had not used mobile applications from the hospitality firms. The results showed that promotion information was not an only reason to download mobile applications; however, the results also showed that consumers who enjoy using smartphones and who are confident in themselves are more likely to download the mobile applications.Research limitations/implicationsThe data were collected in a university; therefore, generalizability is one of the limitations of this research. Multiple regressions only verify the relationship between dependant and independent variables. University students may not have a chance to plan their trips so they may not need the mobile applications.Originality/valueThis study employed the TAM to examine the reasons why customers download mobile applications offered by companies in the hospitality industry. Literature discussing mobile applications in the hospitality industry is very scarce. This research will assist managements in utilizing their mobile applications.

An Importance Performance Analysis of smartphone applications for hotel chains

“…The overall average age of the respondents is 26.1 years old, 42% of respondents are male while 58% are female, as shown in Table 1. This is comparable to the description of the sample population in Mo Kwon, Bae, and Blum (2013), in that respondents are younger, as anticipated in the app user profile. On average, these respondents have 36 apps on their smartphones, but only 4.9 are specifically hospitality or travel apps.…”

“…Another limitation was the sample size with 214 responses who have installed one or more hospitality and travel apps, but only 57 had used hotel apps before. Mo Kwon et al (2013) report that most hospitality app users had used airline apps (70%) or restaurant apps (17%), but not hotel apps and Wang et al (2015) analysed 5878 OTAs and hotels app reviews and reveal that only 1613 reviews (27%) are related to hotels while the rest are related to OTAs. This may indicate that customers are not yet ready for hotel specific apps.…”

Predicting Tourists Decisions to Adopt Mobile Travel Booking

“…They found that it was significant in predicting mobile ticketing adoption [11]. Cheng and Huang investigated high speed rail passengers' acceptance of mobile ticketing services and results indicated that a combination of the mental accounting theory and TAM was appropriate for explaining passengers' mobile ticketing service adoption [12]. A detailed literature review indicated that there were quite a few studies on the adoption of mobile travel booking from the travel standpoint.…”

Developing mobile services

“…Existing studies of mobile devices and apps in the tourism context have mainly focused on the strategic importance and impacts of mobile technology on the tourists' experience (Neuhofer et al, 2012;Tjostheim and Fesenmaier, 2008;Wang et al, 2014Wang et al, , 2016, and on mobile technology use intention based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and its derivatives (Hsu and Chu, 2014; Kim et al,2008;Kwon et al, 2013;Rivera et al, 2015 ). While these studies have advanced the body of knowledge of tourism mobile technology, they might not be able to identify specific task and technology characteristics at the early, beginning stage of designing a tourist-preferred app.…”