PERCEPTIONS ABOUT IMPLEMENTATION OF SERVICE ROBOTS IN HOSPITALITY BUSINESSES IN KAZAKHSTAN AND RUSSIA - COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Our goal is to assess the understanding and acceptance of robotization in hospitality, based on research done in the two countries. This research applies a survey method to collect respondents’ opinion of hospitality employees vs hospitality customers. The main sampling frames are formed by employees of hotels, restaurants and other hospitality businesses. Five hypotheses are studied and tested for the two categories of respondents in each country. The results from the statistical analysis differ for the studied countries, and between the two studied categories of respondents. The study confirms the expectations of improving the quality and increasing the effectiveness of robotizing the hospitality businesses. This research adds knowledge and understanding of how the hospitality employees and customers in Kazakhstan and Russia consider the implementation of service robots. The statistics show that the findings have value and can be used by hospitality managers when they consider possible robotization.