Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Recent investments in automation and AI are reshaping the hospitality sector. Driven by social an... more Recent investments in automation and AI are reshaping the hospitality sector. Driven by social and economic forces affecting service delivery, these new technologies have transformed the labor that acts as the backbone to the industry-namely frontline service work performed by housekeepers, front desk staff, line cooks and others. We describe the context for recent technological adoption, with particular emphasis on algorithmic management applications. Through this work, we identify gaps in existing literature and highlight areas in need of further research in the domains of worker-centered technology development. Our analysis highlights how technologies such as algorithmic management shape roles and tasks in the high-touch service sector. We outline how harms produced through automation are often due to a lack of attention to non-management stakeholders. We then describe an opportunity space for researchers and practitioners to elicit worker participation at all stages of technolog...
User generated travel reviews are becoming a prominent information source for travelers making ho... more User generated travel reviews are becoming a prominent information source for travelers making hotel purchase decisions. This study examines 60,648 user generated travel reviews for 4,853 hotels, across hotel segments determining word use patterns and frequencies. The intent of this study was to determine if actionable words: those that would suggest areas where a hotel could take action and thereby improve their customer satisfaction varied by segment. The study found that travelers ’ use of words and word patterns in comments accompanying online ratings had some differences across different hotel segments.
Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
As food delivery robots are spreading onto streets and college campuses worldwide, users' views o... more As food delivery robots are spreading onto streets and college campuses worldwide, users' views of these robots will depend on their direct and indirect interactions with the robots and their conversations with other people, such as those with whom they are ordering food via a robot. We examined if being in a group of 2 to 3 people affects the acceptance and trust of the robot compared to being an individual user. First-time users of the food delivery robot service (N = 60) ordered food either as an Individual or in a Group. We measured the acceptance and trust of the robots after three Exposures (pre-exposure, after ordering food on the app, and after the robots delivered the food). Results indicated that Individual users had more acceptance and trust compared to Group users. Further, as hypothesized, groups had more variation in acceptance and trust compared to individual users, consistent with patterns of group polarization-i.e., group members influencing each other's perceptions to become more positive or negative. Further analysis demonstrated that group members were highly influenced by their groupmates. Designers and restaurant operators should consider how to enhance group members' experience of delivery robots. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing • Human-computer interaction (HCI) • HCI design and evaluation methods • User studies
Hotels are utilizing a variety of technologies in the guest room and throughout the hotel. Artifi... more Hotels are utilizing a variety of technologies in the guest room and throughout the hotel. Artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), robots, cobots (collaborative robots), and chatbots are changing the service experience and hotel operations. Technology is redefining how we interact with the guest at all touchpoints, and how we manage employees and processes in hotel operations. Hotel and guestroom technologies provide increased management tools and data, to predict reservation demand, guest needs, and even when equipment might fail. While hotel technologies are increasingly automated, the use of technology is balanced by the consumer’s desire for the human touch in service. Adoption of hotel technologies is also limited by costs, the hotel workforce, and hotel organizational and ownership structures
The Routledge Companion To International Hospitality Management, 2020
We present a comprehensive analysis of the form and interaction of dipolar bright solitons across... more We present a comprehensive analysis of the form and interaction of dipolar bright solitons across the full parameter space afforded by dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing the rich behaviour introduced by the non-local nonlinearity. Working within an effective one-dimensional description, we map out the existence of the soliton solutions and show three collisional regimes: free collisions, bound state formation and soliton fusion. Finally, we examine the solitons in their full threedimensional form through a variational approach; along with regimes of instability to collapse and runaway expansion, we identify regimes of stability which are accessible to current experiments.
As robots are becoming more prevalent and entering hospitality settings, understanding how differ... more As robots are becoming more prevalent and entering hospitality settings, understanding how different configurations of individuals and groups interact with them becomes increasingly important for catering to various people. This is especially important because group dynamics can affect people’s perceptions of situations and behavior in them. We present research examining how individuals and groups interact with and accept a humanoid robot greeter at a real-world café (Study 1) and in an online study (Study 2). In each study, we separately examine interactions of individuals, groups that participants formed after they arrived at the café (new-formed groups), and groups that participants arrived with at the café (pre-formed groups). Results support prior findings that groups are more likely to interact with a public robot than individuals (Study 1). We also report novel findings that new-formed groups interacted more with the robot than pre-formed groups (Study 1). We link this with g...
In “Web Scraping for Hospitality Research: Overview, Opportunities, and Implications,” Han and An... more In “Web Scraping for Hospitality Research: Overview, Opportunities, and Implications,” Han and Anderson present the tools and methods for collecting online data through data scraping. Although the article describes in detail the processes for gathering data, and presented recent court rulings that allow data scraping in the United States, it did not adequately address the ethical collection of online data. The internet has opened up new opportunities to research interesting questions and to collect data much faster than has been possible in the past. The emergence of online databases and social media sites enables new lines of research while at the same time introducing new ethical questions for both researchers and institutional research boards (IRBs). Using web-based data for research is not new. However, as Han and Anderson point out, a 2019 ruling ( HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corporation, appeal from the United States District Court) has redefined what is legal in online data co...
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how well hotel website load time performance ... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how well hotel website load time performance compared against customer expectation benchmarks. In a competitive market, service interactions are important. As customers move to mobile devices, the time to load a website is a critical part of the service delivery. Long load times can lead to poor service experiences, customer frustration and lost business. Hotel website load times on both mobile and desktop devices were examined and compared to service expectations. Design/methodology/approach The study used an online service to assess and compare website load performance using both desktop and mobile devices for 259 international hotel company and sub-brand websites. Findings The time to load hotel websites was significantly slower on mobile devices compared to desktops. Load times on both platforms exceeded 3 s, which is considered best practice. Long load times represent a service gap and can cause dissatisfaction resulting in a ...
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Recent investments in automation and AI are reshaping the hospitality sector. Driven by social an... more Recent investments in automation and AI are reshaping the hospitality sector. Driven by social and economic forces affecting service delivery, these new technologies have transformed the labor that acts as the backbone to the industry-namely frontline service work performed by housekeepers, front desk staff, line cooks and others. We describe the context for recent technological adoption, with particular emphasis on algorithmic management applications. Through this work, we identify gaps in existing literature and highlight areas in need of further research in the domains of worker-centered technology development. Our analysis highlights how technologies such as algorithmic management shape roles and tasks in the high-touch service sector. We outline how harms produced through automation are often due to a lack of attention to non-management stakeholders. We then describe an opportunity space for researchers and practitioners to elicit worker participation at all stages of technolog...
User generated travel reviews are becoming a prominent information source for travelers making ho... more User generated travel reviews are becoming a prominent information source for travelers making hotel purchase decisions. This study examines 60,648 user generated travel reviews for 4,853 hotels, across hotel segments determining word use patterns and frequencies. The intent of this study was to determine if actionable words: those that would suggest areas where a hotel could take action and thereby improve their customer satisfaction varied by segment. The study found that travelers ’ use of words and word patterns in comments accompanying online ratings had some differences across different hotel segments.
Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
As food delivery robots are spreading onto streets and college campuses worldwide, users' views o... more As food delivery robots are spreading onto streets and college campuses worldwide, users' views of these robots will depend on their direct and indirect interactions with the robots and their conversations with other people, such as those with whom they are ordering food via a robot. We examined if being in a group of 2 to 3 people affects the acceptance and trust of the robot compared to being an individual user. First-time users of the food delivery robot service (N = 60) ordered food either as an Individual or in a Group. We measured the acceptance and trust of the robots after three Exposures (pre-exposure, after ordering food on the app, and after the robots delivered the food). Results indicated that Individual users had more acceptance and trust compared to Group users. Further, as hypothesized, groups had more variation in acceptance and trust compared to individual users, consistent with patterns of group polarization-i.e., group members influencing each other's perceptions to become more positive or negative. Further analysis demonstrated that group members were highly influenced by their groupmates. Designers and restaurant operators should consider how to enhance group members' experience of delivery robots. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing • Human-computer interaction (HCI) • HCI design and evaluation methods • User studies
Hotels are utilizing a variety of technologies in the guest room and throughout the hotel. Artifi... more Hotels are utilizing a variety of technologies in the guest room and throughout the hotel. Artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), robots, cobots (collaborative robots), and chatbots are changing the service experience and hotel operations. Technology is redefining how we interact with the guest at all touchpoints, and how we manage employees and processes in hotel operations. Hotel and guestroom technologies provide increased management tools and data, to predict reservation demand, guest needs, and even when equipment might fail. While hotel technologies are increasingly automated, the use of technology is balanced by the consumer’s desire for the human touch in service. Adoption of hotel technologies is also limited by costs, the hotel workforce, and hotel organizational and ownership structures
The Routledge Companion To International Hospitality Management, 2020
We present a comprehensive analysis of the form and interaction of dipolar bright solitons across... more We present a comprehensive analysis of the form and interaction of dipolar bright solitons across the full parameter space afforded by dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing the rich behaviour introduced by the non-local nonlinearity. Working within an effective one-dimensional description, we map out the existence of the soliton solutions and show three collisional regimes: free collisions, bound state formation and soliton fusion. Finally, we examine the solitons in their full threedimensional form through a variational approach; along with regimes of instability to collapse and runaway expansion, we identify regimes of stability which are accessible to current experiments.
As robots are becoming more prevalent and entering hospitality settings, understanding how differ... more As robots are becoming more prevalent and entering hospitality settings, understanding how different configurations of individuals and groups interact with them becomes increasingly important for catering to various people. This is especially important because group dynamics can affect people’s perceptions of situations and behavior in them. We present research examining how individuals and groups interact with and accept a humanoid robot greeter at a real-world café (Study 1) and in an online study (Study 2). In each study, we separately examine interactions of individuals, groups that participants formed after they arrived at the café (new-formed groups), and groups that participants arrived with at the café (pre-formed groups). Results support prior findings that groups are more likely to interact with a public robot than individuals (Study 1). We also report novel findings that new-formed groups interacted more with the robot than pre-formed groups (Study 1). We link this with g...
In “Web Scraping for Hospitality Research: Overview, Opportunities, and Implications,” Han and An... more In “Web Scraping for Hospitality Research: Overview, Opportunities, and Implications,” Han and Anderson present the tools and methods for collecting online data through data scraping. Although the article describes in detail the processes for gathering data, and presented recent court rulings that allow data scraping in the United States, it did not adequately address the ethical collection of online data. The internet has opened up new opportunities to research interesting questions and to collect data much faster than has been possible in the past. The emergence of online databases and social media sites enables new lines of research while at the same time introducing new ethical questions for both researchers and institutional research boards (IRBs). Using web-based data for research is not new. However, as Han and Anderson point out, a 2019 ruling ( HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corporation, appeal from the United States District Court) has redefined what is legal in online data co...
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how well hotel website load time performance ... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how well hotel website load time performance compared against customer expectation benchmarks. In a competitive market, service interactions are important. As customers move to mobile devices, the time to load a website is a critical part of the service delivery. Long load times can lead to poor service experiences, customer frustration and lost business. Hotel website load times on both mobile and desktop devices were examined and compared to service expectations. Design/methodology/approach The study used an online service to assess and compare website load performance using both desktop and mobile devices for 259 international hotel company and sub-brand websites. Findings The time to load hotel websites was significantly slower on mobile devices compared to desktops. Load times on both platforms exceeded 3 s, which is considered best practice. Long load times represent a service gap and can cause dissatisfaction resulting in a ...
Uploads
Papers by Betsy Stringam