Exploring the drivers of customer experience quality in smart hotels

Smart hotels are reshaping what guests expect from a stay—blending AI, IoT, robotics, and self-service technologies with traditional hospitality. But which combinations of factors actually drive a high-quality customer experience (CEQ) in this hybrid environment, and which combinations end up dragging it down? This study takes a configurational approach to find out.

How the research was done

Grounded in cue utilization theory and complexity theory, the researchers analyzed 5,852 online reviews from six representative smart hotels worldwide—Flyzoo Hotel in Hangzhou, Chase Walker Hotel in Taiwan, Henn-na Hotel in Tokyo, Aloft Cupertino in California, Yotel in New York, and Yotel in Singapore—collected from Ctrip, Fliggy, TripAdvisor, Agoda, and Booking. The study combined two complementary methods: an inductive content analysis using NVivo (open, axial, and selective coding) to identify the factors customers actually attend to when evaluating their experience, followed by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to test which combinations of these factors lead to high or low CEQ.

What the research found

Eight critical factors emerged from the content analysis: staff performance, price and value, location, smart service, safety and security, learning, servicescape, and food and beverage. The fsQCA revealed that no single factor is necessary or sufficient on its own—high CEQ instead arises through four distinct configurational pathways: (1) a staff performance and servicescape-oriented type, where guests are less sensitive to smart services and rely on human interaction and physical environment; (2) a smart service and servicescape-oriented type, where technology and the physical environment carry the experience even when human service is minimal; (3) a staff performance, smart service, and safety/security-oriented type, where social-environment cues dominate; and (4) a staff performance, smart service, and servicescape-oriented type, where the physical, social, and technological environments must all deliver. For low CEQ, the absence of perceived value for money was close to a necessary condition.

Insights for the industry

Smart hotel managers should optimize both intrinsic cues (staff performance, smart service, safety and security, servicescape, food and beverage) and extrinsic cues (price and value, location, learning) rather than betting on technology alone. Technology should be deployed to support—not substitute—meaningful staff–customer interaction; privacy and data security must be communicated, not assumed; and pricing should be tightly aligned with the value actually delivered, since mismatches are a reliable path to negative experiences. Because high CEQ can be reached through several distinct combinations, hotels should tailor their resource allocation to the bundle that fits their concept and customer mix—investing complementarily in staff training, ambient design, seamless smart service operation, and customer adaptation support, rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions. Dimensions unique to smart hotels, such as human–robot interaction, e-housekeeping, privacy protection, and learning experiences (especially for families and younger travellers), can also serve as meaningful differentiators.