Impact of AI Chatbots and Employee Service on Intent to Recommend and Revisit in Hotel: The Mediating Role of Perceived Information Quality

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been relatively prevalent in the last century as it revolutionized the business landscape, especially in industries centralized in providing services such as tourism and hospitality [1]. In the hospitality industry, delivering excellent service experiences to customers is paramount for sustaining competitiveness in the market. Hence, this study quantitatively investigated the mediating role of perceived information quality in their experiences with front desk staff and AI Chatbots in shaping customers' intentions to recommend and revisit the selected hotels in the Philippines. Service-Profit Chain Model was applied to assess and justify the likelihood of the hotel customers' recommending and revisiting the place after their pre-booking experiences. The mediation and links between variables made use of the Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), with the data resulting from a non-purposive sampling method comprising 473 respondents. Results revealed that customers' perceived information quality has a significant mediating relationship between the service experience with employees and intent to recommend, with a weaker mediating effect on intent to revisit. Conversely, customers' perceived information quality only showed a mediating effect on the services from AI Chatbots and intention to recommend but not their intention to revisit.