The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sociability of Brazilian consumers on attitudes and the use of contactless technologies in hospitality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7784/rbtur.v20.3378Keywords:
Use of Contactless Technologies, Consumer Attitude, Sociability, Hotel Services, COVID-19Abstract
Although the adoption of contactless technologies in the hotel industry has been extensively investigated in Asian, North American, and European contexts, gaps remain regarding the factors influencing this behavior in Brazil. Brazilian consumers tend to value human contact in hospitality services, which led this study to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and individual sociability on attitudes and use of contactless technologies in lodging. To this end, an online survey was conducted with 299 respondents who had already used some type of lodging service in the country. The collected data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), complemented by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The results indicated that only attitudes towards contactless services exerted a significant influence on their acceptance and preference for use, while the effects of sociability and perceptions about the pandemic were not statistically significant. The study reinforces the centrality of the attitude itself as a direct antecedent of the use of contactless technologies in the hotel sector and questions the universal applicability of concepts such as sociability in specific cultural contexts. Finally, the findings also suggest that, in the Brazilian context, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on specific aspects of consumption in the hotel industry may have been more transitory than structural.
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