Chapter 5: Advanced Technologies for Enhancing Guest Dining Experience

In the present day, food and beverage sectors are in need to retain their survival and achieve success as a result of globalization and increasing stiff competition. Due to this demand, the reflections of digitalization in the food and beverage industry have become more visible and necessary in recent years. To be precise, there is an extensive usage of smartphones and innovative applications like augmented reality and virtual reality to encourage manufacturers to build effective relationships with customers and to draw attention to their own businesses.

The growth and evolution of robotics has been influenced by the invention of the first transistor, integrated circuits, and eventually the digital computer. These revolutionary developments boosted the demand for robots even more and made a big difference in their growth from purely mechanical gadgets to programmable models (Choi, 2021). Robots have recently started ruling the travel and hotel industry. An effective robot system will effectively assist travel agencies and hotels with manual or repetitive tasks. Robotic applications in hotel industry are enormously growing in the wake of 2019 pandemic. Marketing and management techniques in hotel industry are taking new strides thanks to the technological advancements. Remarkably, with robotic support, service industry has turned more automated. Despite its acceptance, coordination between humans and robots can still be considered a major factor which determines the success rate of robotic services. The robots in hotels generally involve five significant roles, i.e., their support, replacement to human, differentiation, upgrading, and upskilling. Similarly, Jabeen et al. (2021) exhibited five different factors that influence automation in the hotel industry, i.e., intelligence of humans, services, robotics, and ultimately the internal and organizational environment. Nevertheless, the implementation of robotic services will possibly create either positive or negative environment. This refers to that the application of robotic services replaces some manual work but concurrently creates extra tech-savvy jobs also. Consequently, to incorporate robotics into service industry, Tuomi et al. (2020) developed a respectable job through automation model, which incorporates the efficiency of human–machine assistance, working environments, and level of freedom.