Factors influencing hotel customers' intention to use a fingerprint system

Purpose - This paper aims to extend the technology acceptance model (TAM) to explore the factors influencing a hotel customer's intention to use a fingerprint system instead of a traditional keycard system and the moderating factors (i.e. gender and age) on the relationships between the proposed factors and the customer's intention to use fingerprint technology. When hotels add new technologies, the potential vulnerability of their systems also increases. Underestimating such risks can possibly result in massive losses from identity theft and related fraud for hoteliers. Customers who are aware of these risks may become more open to innovative methods of identification or verification, such as biometrics. Design/methodology/approach - The online survey instrument was developed based on TAMs. The authors collected complete 526 responses from hotel customers and tested the hypotheses using structural equation modeling. Findings - This study found seven factors (i.e. perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, perceived convenience, perceived data security, perceived property security and personal concerns) which significantly influence a hotel customer's intention to use fingerprint technology. Gender and age played important moderating roles in the relationships between some of these factors and the intention to use. Practical implications - Recommendations are made as to how hotels can benefit from the implementation of biometrics, particularly fingerprint systems. For example, a hotel's marketing campaign can be more effective by emphasizing the advantages of fingerprint technology related to "data security and convenience" for younger consumers (i.e. Gen X and Gen Y). Originality/value - Both educators and practitioners will benefit from the findings of this empirical study, as there are very few published studies on a customer's fingerprint technology acceptance in the hotel context.