Smart Hospitality: Opportunities and Challenges from Stakeholder Perspective in Santa Elena Province

Abstract

Currently, staying in a hotel is very different from how it was in the past, this happens thanks to technology that advances faster and brings many updates and tools that can be used to make the guest’s stay more comfortable and pleasant. However, the decision and the way to apply technology to a hotel comes from owner, investors and managers who are important operational stakeholders. That is why, the purpose of the paper is to explore the opportunities and challenges for smart hospitality in Santa Elena Province from the perspective of stakeholders. In depth interviews were conducted with five hotel stakeholders in Santa Elena Province such as managers and owners of hotels. The opportunities identified are current technology available, new guest preferences and potential of Santa Elena Tourist places. The challenges identified are finance barriers, nonclear public policy and lack of human resources specialized. The findings also shows that smart hospitality is just starting in Santa Elena province and few four- and five-stars hotels have some tools to consider smart. In addition, there is a big gap in the opportunities and challenges identified in the literature compared with a specific context like Ecuador in Santa Elena province.