The present study develops and validates an extended model of tourists’ adoption intention towards self-service technologies (SSTs) to examine whether tourists prefer SSTs over employee-mediated services. Tourists’ need for interaction (NI) with hospitality employees has been proposed as an important variable influencing tourists’ propensity towards SST adoption in an offline hospitality context. The proposed model illustrates the reasons behind consumer choice between alternative service delivery processes – modern service delivery by SSTs and traditional service delivery through employees. It is based on primary responses collected from a sample (n = 648) of domestic and foreign tourists in India. Findings show that NI and perceived usefulness perform vital roles in choosing SSTs over employees in trial and adoption stages of innovation adoption model, respectively. Results also suggest that a few non-technical concerns and motivations (perceived trust and perceived performance risk) might offset SST deployment. The proposed model assists service firms and managers in analysing tourists’ adaptability towards SSTs and deciding an appropriate combination of SSTs and employees for superior service delivery.
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