Chapter 4: Customer Attitudes Toward Robots in Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality: A Conceptual Framework

Purpose: The goal of the chapter is to define customer attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality (TTH) and to analyse their most significant characteristics.

Design/methodology/approach: The book chapter develops a conceptual framework of attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality, based on critical analysis of relevant publications.

Findings: The chapter provides a definition and discussion of the characteristics of customer attitudes towards robots in TTH. It elaborates the structural elements of attitudes towards robots, and the links and interactions between the elements.

Research limitations: Research limitations stem from the small number of studies on customer attitudes towards robots in TTH.

Practical implications: The theoretical analysis can be used as a starting point for empirical studies of customer attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality.

Social implication: Combined services, based on human employee-service robot collaboration, are the optimal decision for forming favourable customer attitudes towards robotisation and automation in tourism and hospitality. In that way clients’ needs of high technological convenience, interpersonal communication and socialisation are met simultaneously.

Originality/value: This research is among the few publications that study customer attitudes towards robots in travel, tourism and hospitality. The authors develop a matrix of users’ attitudes and behaviours when using robots in travel, tourism and hospitality.