Guest Socioeconomic Status and Hotel Green Technology: Manager Entrepreneurial Advantage

Guest Socioeconomic Status and Hotel Green Technology: Manager Entrepreneurial Advantage

Faranak Memarzadeh, Sulekha Anand
DOI: 10.4018/IJSECSR.2020070104
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Abstract

To offer the most effective, sustainable service, hoteliers need a clear understanding of guests' viewpoints on hotels' green technology. Besides the guests' demographic information, which helps in understanding their preferred green-service, information on their socioeconomic status would provide the layout of the guests' mindset and their perceptions of the hotel's green technology. This study employed 210 participants to discover how managers can attain the business advantage of having guests' socioeconomic information. Utilizing the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study examined how the ease of use and usefulness of the green technology is affected by the level of income, education, or cultural background of the guests. The findings indicate that ease of use has a significant relationship with guests' education, and there is no relationship between ease of use and level of income or cultural background. Additionally, no relationship was found between usefulness and education, level of income, or ethnic background.
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Introduction

Collecting hotel guest demographic information has major advantages for hoteliers. For instance, having demographic information such as average age, gender, and purpose of the hotel stay will help hoteliers offer tailored services according to guest needs. Also, collecting demographic data will help hoteliers eliminate nonessential services, which consequently would reduce operation costs. The study of Han, Hsu, Lee, and Sheu (2011) revealed that female guests are more eager to buy green hotel services than males. Thus, hoteliers can benefit greatly from knowing the characteristics of their target segment. In a study conducted by Lehto, O'Leary, and Lee (2002), females were shown to have a stronger preference for information about hotel facilities and amenities. Therefore, managers need to develop stronger communication systems to address this requirement.

While having guest demographic information will help hoteliers offer precise and targeted services, socioeconomic status, on the other hand, helps service providers understand how the provided services are evaluated and eventually used by their guests. According to Diamantopoulos, Schlegelmilch, Sinkovics, and Bohlen (2003), theories on environmental sustainability dependent on demographic variables. However, none of those variables affect environmental awareness. Also, Han et al.’s (2011) study discovered that guest sustainable behavior did not significantly change based on age, income, and educational level. Thus, these previous studies showed that guest intention to adopt environmentally sustainable behavior does not significantly dependent on their socioeconomic characteristics.

The present study considers if there is a significant difference between the perception of the hotel’s green technologies and guest socioeconomic characteristics. Importantly, these findings will help hotel managers offer the best services in different ways. Knowing guest social composition will help managers target the right customers. On the other hand, these results will enhance the efficiency of the offered service since it will be the best-tailored service to the correctly targeted guests. Analyzing guest perceptions of green applications was conducted by evaluating the ease of use and usefulness of these applications, which is adapted from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). From the managers’ perspective, offering efficient and effective services will result in a significant reduction of operating costs, and in the long term, will provide a major advantage for the hotel in the highly competitive marketplace.

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