The aim of this study is to determine the factors affecting the usage of Guest Empowerment Technologies (GET) in hotels among hotel visitors in Labuan, Malaysia. The research used multiple regression for data analysis across a sample of 225 respondents who stayed in hotel at least once in a year. Their participation was voluntarily. Results confirmed that the core factor affecting users' intention to use of GET is perceived usefulness. Meanwhile, all variables are proven to be significant to each other and perceived usefulness had the strongest influencing on the users' intention to use of GET. The findings provide additional information to the hotels for further understanding their consumers' characteristics in hotels. Having this information, the proposed framework can be use as the basis for further research.
TopIntroduction
With today's rapid advancement in technology, most of the organizations are trying to maximizing their productivity and lowering the costs by replacing the traditional way to the latest technology. Research has proven that in hospitality industry, the expenses of attracting new hotel guests is fifth the time of the cost of current customer withholding, and also low loss of customers by 5% leads to improved profits from 25% to 85%, (Bang & Kim, 2013). Technologies aid companies to satisfy the requests for updated and precise information by people and the technology implementation in the tourism field has been improved dramatically (Connolly & Lee, 2006; Singh & Kasavana, 2005). Recent technology has steadily remodeling the fundamental construction of business, industry and society (Buhalis, 2003). Therefore, in today’s economy, we can see that many organizations are trying to implant the technology assisted self-service environment in many industries such as automobile, travel, hotel and more. By using the advance technique, clients are able to acquire the goods or services faster, easier and more convenient. Even the organization’s issues and customer’s complain will be reduced. For example, in hotel industry, organizations are using a specialized form from the usage of self-service technology (SST) which also known as guest empowerment technology (GET).
Self-service technology (SST) or guest empowerment technology (GET) is an electronic device that is designed to replace many face-to-face service interactions with the intention to make service transactions easier, quicker and convenient. In hotels, most of the traditional works have been replaced by this technology. For example, in-room check-out systems, in-room entertainment systems, on demand services, lobby kiosks, and online reservation systems. All of these systems allowed users to have more personal control over during their trip in hotel without direct interruption from hotel staff. Self-services are usually differentiated from professional services as those activities performed by clients without the attendance of any worker of the company. On the other hand, by allowing clients to reach the self-service, organizations can save costs and enhances effectiveness from the service-related activities.
The development of self-service technology (SST) has greatly changed the way how clients communicate with the organization to create service outcomes. From the previous research which has identified a set of self-service technology (SST) in different sectors and how customers involvement in the systems. There is a need that we do a study is about to determine the variables that affect the usage of Guest Empowerment Technology (GET) with a specific focus on in-room entertainment technologies by the constructs of a hybrid task-technology fit (TTF)/technology acceptance model (TAM) as related to GETs.
The objective this research is to examine the variables that influencing the usage of guest empowerment technologies (GET) among hotel visitors in Labuan. From this research, we will need to collect the data from the guest and do the analysis based on the task characteristics, technology characteristics, experiential characteristics and task technology fit in order to analysis and identical the results. In the data and analysis findings, we defined the task characteristics as a sequence of actions that the person takes to reach their goals. From there, we could analyze how the users are involving themselves to perform for the same tasks. Technology characteristics are the keys that we used to satisfy and improve the performance of all aspects but we often overlooked construct in understanding the impact of technology on individual performance. Experiential characteristics depend on the whole experience how the consumer has with an item or service. Whereas conventional method of services is indicating out advantages and elements yet experiential focuses on granting the consumer to try the service or product by himself/herself. Last, the task-technology fit determine which technology assists can be the most suitable and convenient for person in performing his or her arrangements of undertakings.