Promoting a technologically driven tourism industry post-COVID-19 : a case study of hotels in Durban, South Africa

Abstract

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in 2019 resulted in governments from around the world being proactive by responding with extreme measures that had significant impacts on economies from travel bans to some hotels closing down temporarily and others indefinitely. Quarantine and partial-to-full lockdowns were enforced to contain the spread of the virus. As a result of this, the tourism industry suffered the most. The South African tourism industry was not spared from such impacts. The aim of the study is to promote a technologically driven tourism industry post-COVID-19 in South Africa. Hotels are now adopting technological solutions to provide guests with contactless hotel services and reassure them of their health and safety. There is an increase in the adoption of robotics and AI, self-service kiosks, remote check-out and facial recognition check-in systems, all these technological innovations are being implemented to minimize the spread and risk of COVID-19 infections by eliminating physical human-to-human contact. The spatial setting of this research study was the City of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The study integrated two different sampling techniques underpinned by probability sampling method, namely: simple random sampling and nonprobability sampling method, namely: purposive sampling technique. The study’s target population for hotel guests, was N=2 000 000 (forecasted visitors), thus a sample size of n=384 was determined to be appropriate. However, a sample size of 422 was achieved. The respondents were categorized into two different groups namely hotel guests (travelers) and 11 General Hotel Managers. A convergent parallel mixed method was adopted for this study. Data was collected through online survey questionnaires and structured interviews and was analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 27.0 and NVivo software. The primary results revealed that younger respondents had a positive attitude towards the use of service automation technologies (SATs) in hotels when compared to the older travelers’ counterparts. There were concerns about privacy and security issues, the use of SATs by hotel guests and job losses as a result of the adoption of SATs by general hotel managers. The respondents had a high preference for human employees in hotels for interactivity purposes but also had a high preference for SATs for safety and health purposes where the risk of COVID 19 was involved. Hotels in the city of Durban faced SAT adoption barriers which included a lack of government support and inadequate IT skills and infrastructure. Hotels in the city of Durban along with the city’s tourism industry continue to lag behind in terms of technology adoption. A Conceptual Framework was developed, which was underpinned by the aforementioned findings, and they are expected to be useful tools in assisting General Hotel Managers in the city of Durban in successfully adopting SATs so that their benefits can be fully exploited and restore the trust of hotel guests and travelers and reassure them of their health and safety when consuming tourism and hotel services amid and post-COVID-19 pandemic.