Why hotel guests go mobile? Examining motives of business and leisure travelers

Abstract

ABSTRACTEmploying the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this paper aims to examine two groups of hotel guests—business travelers and leisure travelers’ different motives of using mobile technology in facilitating hotel services during their stay at a hotel. The survey sample is 683 consumers who had the experience of a hotel stay in the last three months, and structural equation modeling was performed. Traditional TAM factors—perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are identified as effective factors in influencing both business and leisure travelers to adopt mobile technology in their hotel stays. However, business travelers are more influenced by reliability and privacy factors of the technology than are the leisure counterparts when deciding to use mobile hotel apps. Leisure travelers are more influenced by “fun” features of the mobile technology and if they are innovative in the nature, they tend to use mobile apps for hotel services.