Hotel Guests' Perceptions of Green Technology Applications, and Practices in the Hotel Industry

Introduction

Promoting specific forms of tourism, influencing tourists’ behavior, and supporting tourist-related products (such as hotels) are some of the principal objectives of sustainable tourism that can be achieved with sustainable technology practices (Ali and Frew, 2014). Recent research has emphasized the importance of two significant subjects in the hospitality industry, technology and sustainability. For example, Law, Buhalis and Cobanoglu (2014) discuss how the rapid development of technology provides extraordinary opportunities for hospitality businesses and Neuhofer, Buhalis, and Ladkin (2015) explain how progress in innovative technology creates opportunities for the service industry to offer optimal service. In the highly competitive service industry, technology can enhance the quality of offered services and provide more personized experiences for service users (Neuhofer et al., 2015).

Recent studies indicate a growing awareness of the importance of sustainability in the service industry. Jones, Hillier, and Comfort (2016) highlight increasing interest in supporting sustainability by both hotel owners and hotel guests. Green technology, which is the combination of technology and sustainability, is a new concept in the hotel industry that could satisfy both guests’ and services’ providers’ desires for sustainability. The environmental impact of a product is a primary focus of green technology (Billatos, 1997). According to Dedrick (2010), the main reason for providers to adopt green technology is to decrease operating costs while minimizing the environmental impacts of running a business. From the users’ standpoint, on the other hand, studies indicate that hotel customers have become more conscious about their environmental responsibilities when it comes to making decisions about purchasing certain products or services (Ramayah, Lee, & Mohamad, 2010). However, no study has examined hotel guests’ perceptions of green technology and their ratings of the efficiency and utility of these applications or practices. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to understand hotel guests’ perceptions about green technology in the hotel industry using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a framework. According to this model, consumers’ choice of whether to use a particular technology depends on its usefulness, defined as the efficiency of a certain practice, and its ease of use, defined as the user-friendliness of the technology (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989).