Progress on robotics in hospitality and tourism: a review of the literature

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of research on robotics in travel, tourism and hospitality, and to identify research gaps and directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyzes 131 publications published during 1993-2019, identified via Scopus, Web of Science, ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Google Scholar. It offers quantitative analysis of frequencies and cross-tables and qualitative thematic analysis of the publications within each of seven identified domains. Findings The paper identifies “Robot,” “Human,” “Robot manufacturer,” “Travel/tourism/hospitality company,” “Servicescape,” “External environment” and “Education, training and research” as the research domains. Most research studies are dedicated to robots in restaurants, airports, hotels and bars. Papers tend to apply engineering methods, but experiments and surveys grow in popularity. Asia-Pacific countries account for much of the empirical research. Research limitations/implications The analysis was limited to publications indexed in four databases and one search engine. Only publications in English were considered. Growing opportunities for those who are anxious to publish in the field are identified. Importantly, emerging research is branching out from the engineering of robots to the possibilities for human/robot interactions and their use for service providers, opening up new avenues of research for tourism and hospitality scholars. Practical implications The paper identified a myriad of application areas for robots across various tourism and hospitality sectors. Service providers must critically think about how robots affect the servicescape and how it needs to be adjusted or re-imagined to ensure that robots and employees can augment the service experiences (co-)created within it. Originality/value This is the first study to systematically analyze research publications on robotics in travel, tourism and hospitality.

The Impact of Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Automation on Service Quality and Service Experience in Hospitality

“…Artificial intelligence provides opportunities for different types of specific analyses and research instruments but has particularly also gained a momentum with the increasingly important development of facial recognition (Del Rio et al 2016). Robots, as demonstrated by Ivanov et al (2019) & Ivanov, Wester & Berezina (2017), have been introduced in hospitality and tourism relatively later than other industries (e.g. engineering) but have increasingly been adopted by many hospitality and tourism businesses as they provide a cost-effective solution to many complex issues (Ivanov & Webster, 2018) while also improving the customer experience (Kuo, Chen & Tseng, 2017;Papathanassis, 2017).…”

Understanding the Robotic Restaurant Experience: A Multiple Case Study

“…Currently, hospitality companies start to adopt service robots for various activities such as housekeeping attendants, bellboys, guides, hosts, porters, cooking staff, room servers, waiters, etc (Ivanov & Webster, 2019c;Ivanov, Webster & Berezina, 2017;Lu, Cai & Gursoy, 2019;Drexler & Lapré, 2019). Therefore, naturally, the number of studies on service robots in hospitality and tourism industry is growing (Choi, Choi, Oh & Kim, 2019;Ivanov, Gretzel, Berezina, Sigala & Webster, 2019;Li, Bonn, & Ye, 2019;Lu et al, 2019;Murphy, Gretzel, & Pesonen, 2019;Murphy, Hofacker & Gretzel, 2017;Tung & Law, 2017;Tung & Au, 2018;Yu & Ngan, 2019). On the other hand, there is an extensive literature related to restaurant experience (Andersson & Mossberg, 2004;Jeong & Jang, 2011;Jin, Lee & Huffman, 2012;Kim & Jang, 2019;Pantelidis, 2010;Ryu & Han, 2011;Velázquez, Blasco, Saura & Contrí, 2010).…”

Robotics in Tourism and Hospitality

“…Based on the tasks that they perform, robots may be classified into two major categories: industrial and service robots (Berezina et al 2019;Collins et al 2017;Murphy et al 2017;Yu 2018). Until the 1990s, the focus was mainly on designing robots for industrial applications (Haidegger et al 2013); however, service robots started attracting more attention in the early 2000s and beyond Murphy et al 2017).…”

“…Robotic technologies have found numerous applications in the restaurant industry as well (Berezina et al 2019). Such applications include back-of-house, front-ofhouse, full restaurant automation, and food delivery.…”

“…Such applications include back-of-house, front-ofhouse, full restaurant automation, and food delivery. At the back-of-house, robots are often used as cook assistants and may be tasked with flipping burgers, making sushi, cutting noodles, or putting pizzas in the oven (Berezina et al 2019;Collins et al 2017). For example, robot Flippy may be tasked with frying burger patties or French fries (Berezina et al 2019).…”