This research exhibits and empirically validates an expansion of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) and integrates artificial intelligence (AI) and pandemic threats to explain customers’ utilitarian-versus-emotional behavioral intentions towards AI-adopting hotels amid and post-COVID-19. Utilizing data gathered from 416 customers, the findings confirmed that customers’ perceived importance of AI amid and post-COVID-19 has a direct positive effect on their behavioral intentions towards hotels adopting those technologies, with perceived benefits of technology playing a more significant mediating role than customers’ trust intervening in that correlation. This provides evidence for the utilitarian perception of customers during crises and offers updated insights into the dynamics that constitute and trigger hotel customers’ behavioral intentions toward AI. The results provide hoteliers with a valid understanding and rationalization of how to utilize AI to address customers’ crucial concerns and interests amid and post-COVID-19 and in similar crises.
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