Service Robots in the Hospitality Industry: An Exploratory Literature Review

Abstract

The service sector is changing drastically due the use of robotics and other technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), Big Data and Biometrics. Consequently, further research opportunities in the service industry domain are also expected. In light of the above, the purpose of this paper is to explore the potentialities and limitations of service robots in the hospitality industry. To this end, this paper uses a conceptual approach based on a literature review. As a result, we found that in contexts of high customer contact, service robots should be considered to perform standardized tasks due to social/emotional and cognitive/analytical complexity. The hospitality industry is therefore considered closely related to empathic intelligence, as the integration of service robots has not yet reached the desired stage of service delivery. In a seemingly far-fetched context of our reality, organizations will have to decide whether the AI will allow the complete replacement of humans with robots capable of performing the necessary cognitive and emotional tasks. Or investing in balanced capacities by integrating robot-human systems that seems a reasonable option these days.

AI and robotics in the European restaurant sector: Assessing potentials for process innovation in a high-contact service industry

“…Similarly, a growing interest can be observed in academic research (Berezina et al 2019;Cain et al 2019;Ivanov et al 2019;Maier and Edwards 2020;Yang et al 2020). In particular, the restaurant business has received attention from multiple research disciplines and offers promising research opportunities (Ivanov et al 2019;Rosete et al 2020). The adoption of AI and robotics service solutions offers a range of possibilities for process innovation in this industry (Ivanov, and Webster, C.…”

“…Chui et al (2016) assume that a strong share of activities in foodservice businesses are susceptible to automation by AI due to a predictable character of most activities. In the current hospitality literature, AI and robotics technologies primarily substitute functional and repetitive tasks that lack intellectual and socio-emotional capabilities (Ivanov et al 2019;Rosete et al 2020). Yet, AI or automated agents have shown their ability to substitute even non-routine and more complex activities (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2011;Frey and Osborne 2017;Huang et al 2019).…”

“…Nonetheless, they are not yet able to develop emotional-social capabilities or authentic emotions Wirtz et al 2018). At the same time, hospitality literature (Rosete et al 2020;Qiu et al 2020;Prentice 2014;Prentice et al 2020) states that these emotional-social capabilities are particularly important in service organizations with a high level of direct customer contact (Bardzil and Slaski 2003;Walker 2017). Hospitality strongly depends on these emotional skills, such as creativity or emotional support, as employees need to manage interpersonal interactions with customers and must perform "emotional labor" to create positive customer experiences (Prentice et al 2020;Rosete et al 2020).…”

“…At the same time, hospitality literature (Rosete et al 2020;Qiu et al 2020;Prentice 2014;Prentice et al 2020) states that these emotional-social capabilities are particularly important in service organizations with a high level of direct customer contact (Bardzil and Slaski 2003;Walker 2017). Hospitality strongly depends on these emotional skills, such as creativity or emotional support, as employees need to manage interpersonal interactions with customers and must perform "emotional labor" to create positive customer experiences (Prentice et al 2020;Rosete et al 2020). Frontline service employees as "stewards of customer contact and relationship management" (Garry and Harwood 2019) require a particularly high level of such emotional intelligence (Garry and Harwood 2019;de Keyser et al 2019).…”

“…They fear that service robots erode the positive hospitality experience (Beldona and Kher 2015;Gursoy et al 2019). Recent research proposes therefore that the ability to deliver emotional, hedonic and utilitarian aspects will be critical for robots to be successfully integrated into the service delivery process (Lu et al 2020;Rosete et al 2020). For this reason, academic literature emphasizes the need for future research that focuses on the deployment of AI and intelligent robots adopting emotional work in the hospitality sector (Ivanov et al 2019;Lu et al 2020).…”