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Know the most important systems used in hotels

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Distinguish among the most various systems that enhance the management and the guest experience in hotels
2. Know the critical role of the Property Management Systems (PMS)
3. Understand how various systems enhance guests’ experiences

 

ROLE OF IT IN HOTELS

Context of hotel operations

To rigorously evaluate the role of IT in hotels, it is especially important to understand the contemporary context of hotel operations. First, guest spend more hours and money in hotels than in other hospitality establishments. As a result, they have an opportunity to interact more extensively with the hotel and exchange information that is critical in the delivery of a service experience. For example, consumers can provide information about their preferences, can interact directly with the staff or through technology. As a result, the hotel is able to integrate that information into the delivery of the service, which should result in enhancing the value proposition of the entire hotel stay.

Due to the specific nature of the hotel experience, hotels need to provide the proper security and safety to guests. Guests may also bring their loved ones and valuable items with them to the hotels (e.g., computers, data, valuable personal items). Therefore, IT is an essential element for mitigating security risks and helping hotels to provide a safe and secure experience for guests. In addition, privacy has always been an important aspect of hotel services and the technology available today has important implications of privacy for guests.

One of the most specific aspects of the hotel experience is that it involves an overnight stay. That means that guests arrive at the hotel tired and could become vulnerable due to their unfamiliarity with the hotel environment, location, surroundings, etc. Therefore, they put their trust in the hotel to provide a safe and private stay that is also relaxing. That creates opportunities for hotels to deploy IT that helps hotels to address such challenges.

Finally, guests tend to imitate their home behavior in hotels but expect a better experience. While it is true that guests’ expectations change all the time, today’s guests expect a certain level of technology set up for the guest room, which includes an Internet connection, a flat screen TV, opportunities to watch multiple channels on TV and connect to streaming TV content. In this context, IT is the primary factor that can set the foundation of the experiences that consumers expect.

Hotel Complexity

Hotels are complex operations and the IT systems in hotels must allow them to manage such complex operations with efficiency and error free. The complexity of hotel operations can be discussed alongside two important aspects:

Managerial complexity. Hotels have multiple departments, such as front desk, housekeeping, facilities, IT, security, and food-and-beverage. While integrated within the same hotel business, each department operates with unique tasks, but all departments eventually exchange information and collaborate in the delivery of experiences for consumers. A primary role of IT in addressing the managerial complexity is to unify the communications among the multiple areas of the hotel and develop seamless communication and integration of services among the multiple functional areas. Moreover, IT must allow managers to obtain information pertaining to all these complex areas to make the best decisions. However, the information can be different from one area to the other, which requires a different managerial approach for each type of department.

Layout complexity. Hotels have diverse types of areas, such as guest rooms, meeting rooms, foodservice areas, parking, spa, retail outlets, and lounges. Each of these areas requires their own specific technology tools to be effectively managed. For example, the IT dedicated to guest rooms would be different than the technology dedicated to managing the retail outlets. Specifically, the technology in the guestroom puts the guest at the center of the interactions with the technology, whereas in retail, the technology focuses on allowing the staff members to optimize individual transactions. Technology for meeting rooms is focusing mostly on communications, whereas technology for foodservice is focused mostly on the managerial and strategic aspects of the business.

Because of this complexity, hotels have gradually incorporated IT in their operations. From a strategic viewpoint, it is important to integrate the technologies that are dedicated to different departments or different areas of the hotel in a way that provides the decision-makers the information necessary to make the best decisions in the shortest amount of time. Moreover, the technologies deployed in various areas allow the decision-makers to focus on the service, while leaving some of the administrative aspects to be addressed by the technology. However, the recent practice has demonstrated that many consumers feel comfortable interacting directly with the technology instead of staff members, which results in additional value for consumers.

Many experts believe that there should be a seamless blend between IT and human interactions in hotels. However, the amount of blend between the IT and human interactions depends on the variety of factors, such as the resources of the company, the type of service, the ability to hire knowledgeable staff and the type of consumer that the hotel can attract. Yet, regardless of the level of blend between IT and human interactions, there is substantial value to be appropriated by both hotels and consumers from the use of IT in hotels. The following sections will explain in more detail how this value can be appropriated and what are the most important technology systems that can provide value.

 

There are principles that overall add value to the experience of staying in a hotel.

Value co-creation. Initially, value has been viewed as the difference between benefits and costs of consuming a specific product (Ramaswamy & Ozcan, 2018). This means that the benefits of staying in the hotel should be commensurate with or exceeding the price that consumers pay for the room. However, the modern view of value is that the consumers and companies act together to co-create value during the process of service delivery and consumption to increase the value that is initially proposed to the consumers by the company (Chen, Kerr, Chou, & Ang, 2017). In other words, consumers act to maximize the value that they receive during a hotel stay. They can do so by providing information to the hotel, and the hotel can use this information in the process of service design, personalization, and delivery (Morosan & DeFranco, 2019). For example, if a guest tells the hotel what kind of pillows, he/she wants, the hotel would be able to provide that prior to the arrival of the consumers, therefore increasing the value of the overall stay. Throughout the stay in a hotel, there are multiple opportunities for guests to interact with the hotel, and the technology has an increasing role in facilitating these interactions. The more interactions the consumers have with the hotel, the better the hotel is positioned to respond to guests’ requests, therefore increasing the value. In other words, the more personalization is provided throughout the consumption process, the more likely the hotel would be to increase the value that the consumer receives when staying in a hotel (Morosan & DeFranco, 2016).

Meeting consumers’ expectations. Another important aspect is the delivery of service at or beyond the expectations of consumers (Bowen & Chen, 2001). The expectations of consumers can be stimulated through marketing material, interactions with other consumers, but also through the large amount of eWOM available online. In addition, personal factors can also influence consumers’ expectations, such as their previous experience with a brand, and their personal characteristics or preferences. Therefore, when they arrive at the hotel, consumers have certain expectations about the quality of the overall experience. If the services are delivered below the level of service expectations, the consumers are not happy. If the services are delivered at a level that the consumers expect, the consumers are pleased with the level of services. But if the services delivered at a level that exceeds guests’ expectations, they will be pleasantly surprised, which is likely to increase the overall value and satisfaction with the hotel services (Oliver, 2014).

When talking about interactions between consumers and hotels, we predominantly refer to the interactions that occur during the actual stay, when the guest is at the property. But it is also important to recognize that the interactions between the hotel and guests can be mediated efficiently before and after the arrival of the guest on the property. The technology available today allows the hotels to create opportunities for such interactions, which set up the consumers’ expectations for the entire stay.

Generally, when talking about a hotel stay, there is a time difference between the moment of booking and arrival. As sometimes there is a substantial amount of time elapsed from booking to arrival, consumers have enough time to develop expectations. At the same time hotels have opportunities to interact with guests and contribute to the development of such expectations. Some of the technologies available for this type of engagement gravitate around sending text messages or emails to consumers prior to their arrival. Modern systems also synchronize flight schedules with hotel systems. For example, if a guest discloses the flight number to the hotel, this information can be automatically routed to the hotel’s systems. The hotel would know the status of the flight, which is extremely important in situations when there are delayed flights. This way, the hotel has an accurate sense of the time when the consumer would arrive at the hotel and can adapt the service.

Thus, the complex operations of a hotel require the use of certain fundamental technologies due to the challenges of managing such operations. However, there are additional technologies that can be added to a hotel’s IT infrastructure to improve the communication with consumers and facilitate a seamless stay experience. The following sections describe the most commonly used IT systems in hotels, with an emphasis on the way they add value and innovate.

 

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (PMS)

The most important IT system in any hotel is the PMS. PMS are sophisticated software systems that are designed to assist hotel staff in managing the property. They are generally hosted on local servers or in the cloud and are accessed through regular computers or mobile devices on- or off- the property. Given the fact that most vendors provide the PMS together with the hardware on which the PMS runs, sometimes there is confusion among users regarding the typology of PMS. PMS should be viewed as software, even though modern and sophisticated PMS systems make the hotel capable of engaging on tasks that go beyond the fundamental hotel operations. In addition, to streamline the operations and unify the flows of information among the various areas of the hotel, there are other systems that are integrated with the PMS system. Also, while the traditional PMS used to be hosted locally, the modern PMS are cloud-hosted and many of them are offered to hotels as a subscription-based software.

PMS began by addressing basic tasks such as allowing the hotels to manage the reservations and the rooms in a hotel. Starting from these basic tasks, many IT vendors have added additional functionality to the original PMS systems to respond to the requirements of today’s management of hotels. Hotels can now choose to configure their PMS specific to their properties, by selecting the types of features that are valuable to them in the PMS system. In addition, many IT vendors are designing PMS by focusing on specific types of hotels. For example, a small boutique hotel with only grab-and-go breakfast will use a set of features that are different from a large chain property that has multiple foodservice operations on the premises.

 

However, regardless of functionality of modern PMS, they should be able to facilitate at least several basic tasks:

• Distribution channels and pricing
• Reservations
• Room assignment, check-in, and keeping track of charges
• Housekeeping
• Check-out and payment
• Customer profile management and customer relationship management (CRM)

Distribution channels and pricing. Today’s hotels distribute their products using a multitude of retail outlets (e.g., corporate websites, OTAs (online travel agencies), mobile apps). The companies that assist hotels in selling their products altogether form distribution channels. For a hotel, it becomes difficult to manage the sale of its room inventory across multiple distribution channels. This operation is especially complex given that their inventory may end up on tens or hundreds of websites or apps, which allow consumers to book reservations. Therefore, hotels need the PMS to automatically manage the rates for all the inventory of rooms across all these multiple channels but at the same time provide updates when a reservation has been made. The reservations are updated in real time, which means that when a consumer makes a reservation on a particular website (such as an OTA or online travel agency), the reservation should be visible on the PMS screen of the staff member who works at the property where the reservation was made.

Moreover, in addition to managing the sale of inventory, PMS allows the hotels to manage the price of the hotel room. In the past, before the era of revenue management, the room rates would not fluctuate significantly from one day to another. Today, sophisticated systems such as revenue or yield management systems permit real time changes in the room rate based on the demand for a particular room. For example, if there are multiple queries/searches for a specific type of room on a particular date, the system automatically adjusts the rate to go higher. This is because the system recognizes the multiple queries as an indication of high demand and automatically increases the price to take advantage of the higher demand (when consumers are willing to pay more). In contrast, if there are fewer queries/searches for a specific type of room on a particular date, the system understands this situation as relatively low demand (consumers are not willing to pay the current price) and will reduce the price to stimulate demand.

Reservations. In relationship with the previous task, the PMS system can manage the reservations at the level of the property. In fact, this is one of the most fundamental tasks of a PMS system and has been incorporated in even the most basic PMS systems. Any authorized staff member should be able to see the current reservations and have access to changing reservations. They could make, edit, and cancel reservations according through their own interactions with the PMS system. To give the staff member flexibility, efficiency, and ability to make decisions quickly, the interfaces of the modern PMS systems have evolved considerably. For example, they allow for substantial customization of the interface, especially using popular drag-and-drop or touch screen functions. This way, it is easy for staff members to learn how to utilize the PMS system but also be able to manage reservations easily and without error.

Room assignment, check-in, and keeping track of charges. One of the main functions of the PMS system is the ability to check the consumers in. However, before checking-in, the system should allow team members to assign rooms. Even though innovative companies such as Hilton allow consumers to choose their own rooms, therefore passing room assignment to the consumers, it is still common for front desk agents to assign rooms to consumers typically in the day of their arrival on the property. The PMS allows them to complete this task. Similar to other tasks, this should be easy and efficient, given that generally room assignment includes multiple individual operations and there are many opportunities to make errors.

Once consumers arrive on the property, they must be checked in. PMS system should be equipped with the feature that allows staff members to check the consumers in. However, modern hotels are equipped with self-service technologies, which allow the consumers to self-check-in using either a kiosk located in the lobby or a mobile app installed on consumers’ smartphones. Upon check-in, the status of a particular consumer is updated in real time to the PMS, and the staff member can see at any point the check-ins for any time.

Once consumers have checked in, they can accrue charges. While not all the hotels have extra retail outlets or other additional charges (e.g., breakfast, parking, activities, room service), it is convenient for the consumers to just buy the products and direct the charge to be added to the consumers’ account. While the consumers are checked in, the system recognizes them as guests in the house, and keeps a record of the information pertaining to that stay, which is commonly referred to as the folio. PMS systems allow staff members to check the folios of any guest to view the charges that are being posted there and to check for their accuracy. For this to happen, POS (POINT OF SALE) systems that assist with the sale of products or services on a hotel property must be integrated with the PMS system. In more complex hotels, this integration is essential because it offers consumers the convenience that is promised to them by this type of hotel operation.

Housekeeping. Housekeeping is another legacy task of the PMS system. It allows the housekeeping staff to determine the status of all rooms in a hotel. Rooms can have statuses such as Occupied, Vacant-Dirty, Vacant-Ready, or Out-of-order and the housekeeping staff updates the status of the room in the PMS system using terminals located in housekeeping areas, or mobile terminals that they carry with them while they are working on the rooms.

Several systems have been added to be integrated with the PMS system to provide housekeeping staff more flexibility in doing their jobs and being able to address problems that they find in rooms. For example, software such as HotSOS allows housekeeping staff to provide alerts whenever a room is in need for repairs or maintenance. For example, if a member of the housekeeping staff finds that the light bulb in one of the rooms is not working, he/she could place a ticket in the HotSOS software which then will send a message that is routed to the appropriate department to fix. This way, each department has a chance to provide immediate solutions to the problems found in the rooms and increases the likelihood of that room to be returned quickly back into service (Amadeus, 2022).

Check-out and payment. At the end of a stay, naturally consumers check-out. The check-out is a routine task and PMS allows staff members to complete it. In many situations, especially when the hotels are equipped with mobile apps, it is usual for consumers to self-check-out on the app or website and bypass the official check-out altogether. In situations like this, it is up to the staff members to double check if the guest has left the room and to post the appropriate charges to the consumers’ folio. Moreover, it is especially important to check the payment protocols at the end of the stay, especially due to the possibility of fraud associated with the deployment of modern self-check-in/check-out protocols in hotels.

Consumer profile management and consumer relationship management (CRM). Hotels increasingly recognize that an essential element of a successful stay is the initial interaction between guests and staff members as soon as the guests arrive on the property. This type of interaction sets the tone for a successful stay and provides the team members with an opportunity to set up the foundation for a pleasant stay from the moment they first encounter the consumer. Therefore, consumer relationship management (CRM) tasks have been increasingly incorporated into the job descriptions of front desk agents. Accordingly, the front desk agents should have all the necessary information to set up a good foundation for interacting with consumers. For this, it is necessary to have information about the guest at the time of their arrival. While this is not possible for all the consumers, it is possible for consumers who are members of the loyalty program of a hotel company. Given today’s hotel brand consolidation (mergers and acquisitions among hotel companies), it becomes highly likely for a guest arriving at the hotel to be a member of the hotel’s loyalty program. In that situation, the PMS system permits the front desk agent to access the profile of the guest in front of them at the time of their arrival and to use that information properly in the service encounter to provide the best possible service to the consumer.

Moreover, innovative PMS such as Hilton’s OnQ System allow staff members to manage the customer service function very efficiently. For example, staff members can manage reservations across multiple properties and can eventually assist consumers with reservations across the Hilton family of brands. This level of convenience is particularly important in multi-property chains, or when dealing with consumers who are frequent travelers (Inge, 2017).

In addition to the legacy tasks discussed above, there are a variety of other functions that can be added to modern PMS systems. Generally, they are designed to offer the staff members the most available information about consumers or about the property and allow them to do their job very effectively. Among such functions, one could list offering digital keys (consumers using their own smartphones to access guest rooms), video-based remote check-in agents, or messaging through popular communication media such as WhatsApp).

From a management point of view, PMS system development have come a long way. Initially, they have been installed on servers located on the premises of a property. This type of installation still exists today, and many experts consider it outdated, due to the difficulty of controlling updates, managing backups, and integrations. Modern PMS systems are hosted in the cloud, offering hotels the opportunity to focus on the hotel operations instead of troubleshooting such systems. This way, the PMS vendor generally takes care of all the updates, upgrades, security, and can intervene anytime to help the users troubleshoot a problem or offer guidance. Like POS, modern PMS systems may also be equipped with features that allow them to work when Internet connectivity is down. This way, there is continuity in operations with no negative impact on the consumers’ stays.

 

OTHER SYSTEMS

In addition to the PMS system, many hotels have deployed other systems that eventually are used by consumers or staff to enhance the value of a hotel stay. While the list is increasing, the following sections will discuss only a few of these systems from the point of view of adding value to consumers.

In-room systems

Phones. Traditionally, hotels have been trying to offer certain in-room technologies to differentiate their services from competitors and offer extra value to their guests. One of the most traditional types of technology found in every hotel room is the telephone. Historically, the telephone has been added to select guest rooms as a benefit, and later services such as long-distance calling services have been added as an additional benefit. Modern rooms also include telephones even though many consumers staying in those rooms bring with them their cell phones. While there is a landline phone located in most hotel rooms in the U.S., the types of services provided through that landline phone have evolved over time. For example, the phone service is VoIP (voice over IP, which uses digital signal transmitted over the Internet available for us in regular-looking phones), which increases the quality of the calls and reduces the cost of services. In terms of value provided to the consumers, there are numerous shortcuts generally available through the landline phone located in the hotel room, such as directly calling front desk, housekeeping, food service or emergency services. It is important to note that one important feature of the hotel phone systems is that no outside calls can be made to guest rooms without being directly routed by staff members at the hotel desk. This feature exists for safety and security reasons.

Digital clocks. Another ubiquitous device in guest rooms is the electronic clock. Although this type of technology is becoming obsolete, given the fact that most consumers have alarm features on their cell phones, hotels continuously upgrade the type of electronic clocks in the hotel rooms. Such clocks may include some other features such as chargers for mobile devices, multiple alarms, radio, etc.

Climate control. Another feature that is increasingly included as a self-service technology in the hotels is climate control. While the initial in-room climate control systems included nothing more than a thermostat, the modern climate control systems include touchscreen interfaces and interfaces that could communicate with other IT systems of the hotel to personalize services. Sometimes, climate controls are installed on in-room mobile devices, which allow the consumers to control not only the climate in the room but also some other features, such as lighting, curtains, door locks, TV, and so on. This level of integration offers consumers convenience and permits the hotels to troubleshoot problems more effectively. In addition to climate controls, some other devices offer opportunities to order foodservice items or to make requests.

Safes. Increasingly, more hotels are offering safes in their guest rooms. This is because safes offer an extra layer of security for the consumers’ devices and valuable items. Safe technology has not changed radically in the most recent years, although it has become cheaper. Most safes are digital and offer easy to use interfaces for consumers to learn how to use them in a short period of time.

Door locks. Door locks are one of the key features of a guest room. It ensures that guests are safe in their room and protects their privacy. In the development of the modern hotel, the door lock has been one of the areas of constant evolution. While the first hotels had a key with a key chain, which was bulky and inconvenient for consumers, modern technologies have been deployed toward the door locks offer more convenience and security. Modern door locks allow guests to use several advanced techniques to access the room. For example, it is common to find door locks based on Bluetooth technology, which allows consumers to unlock and have access to their rooms using their smartphones. In situations in which mobile device access is not possible, many hotels opt to deploy door locks based integrated circuits which still allows guests who use the traditional cards. Commonly, plastic cards communicate with the door lock using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip technology, which is more resilient to de-magnetization and is not expensive to replace. One of the most advanced types of door locks is biometric door locks. The door unlocks when the consumer is recognized by using one or more of their biometrics. For example, there are door locks which require consumers to use fingerprints to gain access to the rooms. However, for these door locks to work properly, the consumers must enroll with the hotel.

Entertainment systems. Increasingly, hotels are providing entertainment systems in hotel rooms. While the initial entertainment systems only gravitated around providing TVs in rooms, the modern systems still include a TV as a legacy piece of entertainment technology, but also other related systems that provide entertainment to guests. Moreover, the size of the TV has increased, and the TVs are smart TV’s. In addition, hotels offer the consumers premium channels such as HBO and Starz, in addition to opportunities to access to their own subscription for streaming services. Other hotels have seen entertainment as an opportunity to differentiate. For example, CitizenM hotels provides a state-of-the-art entertainment system, which includes a variety of movies and TV shows that can be watched conveniently from the room on a large screen TV. Moreover, one important feature is that a lot of the new TV’s allow the consumers to connect their own devices to the large screen TV, under the premise that the consumers bring with them important content that could be watched on a large screen, or it is more convenient for them to access content through their own subscriptions and devices.

Wi-Fi. The most important technology feature offered to consumers today is Wi-Fi. This is in line with the consumers expectations, given that Wi-Fi connectivity is the number one reason for complaints in the U.S. Initially, Internet connectivity was offered to consumers in the form of a wired connection, through Ethernet cables located in guest rooms. However, the development of Wi-Fi and the convenience of setting up Wi-Fi networks provided opportunities for Wi-Fi connectivity to be offered in hotels and for consumers to expect to have reliable Wi-Fi connectivity. Consumers have access to Wi-Fi in a variety of areas of the hotel, while hotels tend to differentiate the level of Wi-Fi services provided based on those areas. For example, in the lobby, Wi-Fi is generally provided for free to consumers at speeds between 2 and 15 megabits per second (for upload). However, consumers who would like to use higher speed connections can pay for higher speed service, which can be delivered in secure networks and charged accordingly. In such situations, the Internet speed could increase to the point where the consumers can easily stream or download content or upload content online.

Obviously, one of the most important drawbacks of hotel Wi-Fi is the level of connectivity. Because hotels are sometimes characterized by complicated layouts and a multitude of walls, Wi-Fi signal is not equally distributed everywhere in the hotel. Therefore, many consumers could feel that their devices cannot connect to the strongest signal while other consumers are lucky enough to be located in guest rooms close to an access point, therefore having access to a stronger signal. To address these inequalities in signal strength across the property, modern designs for hotels include setting up access points in every guest room, therefore providing the strongest signal for the consumers regardless of room. This way, the networks can be more scalable, which allow the hotel to provide strong Wi-Fi connectivity but also have a good understanding of the metrics of consumers use of Wi-Fi services.

Another important characteristic of modern Wi-Fi networks is that hotels will eventually offer similar speed for both upload and download. This is called symmetric connectivity. Traditionally, hotels and Internet service providers have offered higher speeds for download and lower speeds for upload. This is based on the logic that the consumers are mostly likely to download content from the Internet by activities such as streaming movies, music, scrolling through social media, reading blogs, etc. However, this logic has changed recently, as numerous consumers are now uploading more content (for example, high resolution videos) or engaging in activities that require higher upload speed (posting on social media, working on cloud-hosted documents such as Office 365 or Google Docs) and therefore could be frustrated when the upload speed of a network is not high enough. Therefore, modern hotels are likely to offer symmetric connectivity, with similar speed for both upload and download, providing opportunities for consumers to use Wi-Fi networks without frustration and for the tasks they wish to complete.

Teleconferencing. One of the features that is common in hotels is teleconferencing. Many hotels have offered conference space along with Internet connectivity services. For example, it is common to provide teleconferencing phones, set up routers, public address sound systems, etc. Most recently, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many hotels have designed rooms where the contents of a meeting can be streamed online using streaming services such as Teams or Zoom or can use technologies that allow them to record meetings.

Signage. This technology is especially important in large properties with extensive footprint. Consumers are generally unfamiliar with the layout of the facility, and they need to be guided toward the areas where they wish to go. However, hotels can combine the signage function with the marketing function, given that the hardware has decreased in cost in recent years, and allows for more flexibility in design. Some of the most common signage technologies include large screens placed in strategic locations throughout the property, to guide the consumers but also provide information about the current events taking place on the property, or general information about the destination such as the outside temperature, news, etc.

 

REFERENCES

Amadeus. (2022). Introducing the Future of Amadeus Service Optimization – The New HotSOS Experience. Retrieved from https://www.amadeus-hospitality.com/service-optimization-software/hotsos/

Bowen, J. T., & Chen, S. L. (2001). The relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 13(5), 213-217.

Chen, J.-S., Kerr, D., Chou, C. Y., & Ang, C. (2017). Business co-creation for service innovation in the hospitality and tourism industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(6), 1522-1540.

Inge, J. (2017). OnQ – A Windows Pioneer Still in Global Use. Hospitality Upgrade. Retrieved from https://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/History/May-2017/OnQ-A-Windows-Pioneer-Still-in-Global-Use

Morosan, C., & DeFranco, A. (2016). Co-creating value in hotels using mobile devices: A conceptual model with empirical validation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 52, 131-142.

Morosan, C., & DeFranco, A. (2019). Co-creation of value using hotel interactive technologies: examining intentions and conversion. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 31(3), 1183-1204.

Oliver, R. L. (2014). Satisfaction: A behavioral perspective on the consumer: Routledge.

Ramaswamy, V., & Ozcan, K. (2018). What is co-creation? An interactional creation framework and its implications for value creation. Journal of Business Research, 84, 196-205.