Intention to Adopt AI-Powered Online Service Among Tourism and Hospitality Companies

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a part of the industrial revolution 4.0, and the progress of AI is vast and grows very fast. The development of AI is significantly affecting the association with employees, customers, and other parties (Belanche et al., 2019). AI is immensely adding empathetic, intuitive, and analytical skills, allowing interacting as a new format that would be possible to adopt in business strategy (Huang and Rust 2018). This technology motivates the automation of services and processes, resulting in interacting directly with customers in frontline services (Van Doorn et al., 2017). Adopting AI can reduce the cost and time, eliminate human mistakes, and perform tasks quickly at any time within 24 hours. AI can also help with different tasks such as calculations, data analysis, and problem-solving, adding value to the hotel management. Travel and tourism businesses build a reputation by providing excellent customer service. In contrast, AI technology can support this in a variety of different ways: such as in the absence of staff, AI can provide fast response, tailor recommendations, and improve personalization.

Nowadays, some tourism, leisure, and hospitality companies are starting to accept AI in their firm. For example, AI and autonomous robots are being used to greet customers, serve meals, and cook, take orders already existing around the world (Osawa et al., 2017). According to Van Doorn et al. (2017), automation of services might have a considerable impact on customer behaviors and choices. Having a conversation like humans, intelligent digital assistants, and chatbots is increasingly used for customer services, marketing, and sales. The new version of AI-power bots is very much sophisticated and can be more potent in the future (Srinivasan, Nguyen & Tanguturi, 2019). Thereby, AI can ensure numerous new possibilities (i.e., vehicles and drones, autonomous robots; conversational systems such as digital assistants and chatbots; blockchain and machine learning) to transform hospitality, leisure, and tourism sectors obviously with a greater return.

This research identifies a few research gaps to be addressed. Tourists search for information to get a tourism destination via advanced technology. In response, tourism companies integrate those technologies to attract clients to their business. Although AI is a buzz issue, a few studies uncover the factors influencing intention to use AI-powered service robots (Nam et al. 2021; Zhong et al., 2020), Chatbots (Melián-González et al., 2019; Pillai & Sivathanu, 2020) in the tourism industry. Few other empirical studies on adoption concentrated on virtual reality (Choi et al., 2020; Lee et al. 2020; Li & Chen, 2019), augmented reality technology (Chung et al., 2015). Still, there is a dearth of comprehensive empirical research on the intention to use AI, which can explain the adoption reasons from technological, cognitive, and external forces for hospitality, leisure, and tourism industries. This is particularly in the context of Malaysia, which is an emerging tourist destination.

Thereby the objective of this paper is to identify the determinants of behavioral intention to adopt artificial intelligence powered online service. The present study will fill the literature gap in the adoption of AI technology in the Malaysian context. It contributes theoretically by offering an extension of TAM, incorporating a few cognitive factors in the proposed conceptual model. Beyond the usual relationship, this study experimented with mediating relationships to understand the reasons for adoption deeply in its empirical investigation. The new scale proposed will be a foundation for future research in their replication in similar AI technology fields.