Smart Applications in the Hospitality Business: A Qualitative Study on the City of Eskişehir

Abstract

The objective of this study is to find out to what extend the hotel establishments in Eskişehir use smart hotel applications and the opinions and suggestions of hotel managers on the subject. Design/methodology/approach-The sample of the study consists of hotel establishments in Eskişehir. The hotel establishments were selected by purposive sampling method and the data were obtained by structured interview technique. Sound recordings obtained during interviews were transferred to computer and a descriptive analysis was performed considering the notes of the researcher. Findings-Hotel managers expressed in general that cost of transition to smart hotel applications is high, and consequently, hotels in Eskişehir do not use smart hotel applications. Discussion-Although hotel managers are aware of the future advantages of smart hotel applications, they have argued that cost-benefit analysis should be made carefully. However, smart hotel applications will provide advantage to hotel establishments in terms of competitiveness, efficiency and customer satisfaction in addition to cost advantages with the newly arrived generation Y and Z.

Facing the era of smartness: constructing a framework of required technology competencies for hospitality practitioners

“…The service industry has been in a transitional period, just as that in which the manufacturing industry was in the 18th century (Wirtz et al , 2018). Although Industry 4.0 technologies are transforming hospitality into a smart industry (Buhalis and Leung, 2018; Kabadayi et al , 2019; Neuhofer et al , 2015; Osei et al , 2020; Zencir and Emir, 2019), previous studies have pointed out that hospitality practitioners’ technology adoption behaviour, e.g. integrating ICT into business operations, has already been slower than that of other industrial sectors (Bilgihan and Nejad, 2015; Reino et al , 2013).…”