Phygital customer experience and the adoption of immersive technologies in hospitality: an exploratory study with a value co-creation perspective

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to explore immersive-technology adoption in hospitality through the Phygital Customer Experience (PH-CX) framework. PH-CX extends existing technology acceptance, service-dominant logic, omnichannel and customer-journey perspectives by emphasizing embodied, co-created and human-centered experience across physical, digital and artificial intelligence (AI)-mediated interactions. Design/methodology/approach Using Bayesian Networks, the study examines probabilistic dependencies among perceived usefulness, collaborative value, responsive co-creation attitudes and intention to use immersive technologies. Data was collected from 208 participants exposed to an AI-supported immersive hotel journey scenario. The analysis is exploratory and identifies conditional associations rather than causal effects or latent-variable relationships. Findings Adoption intention was conditionally associated with perceived usefulness, collaborative value and responsiveness to service innovation. The findings suggest that immersive-hospitality engagement involves functional, relational and participatory conditions beyond usefulness alone. However, the item-level results are hypothesis-generating and do not demonstrate PH-CX’s incremental predictive superiority over technology acceptance model (TAM) or service-dominant logic. Research limitations/implications The scenario-based, cross-sectional bayesian network (BN) design cannot model latent constructs, measurement error, mediation or causal effects. Future studies should validate PH-CX dimensions and compare TAM, TAM-plus-service-dominant logic (SDL) and PH-CX models using structural equation modeling, longitudinal designs and holdout-sample prediction. Practical implications Hotels can implement PH-CX through phased AI concierge pilots, cross-platform data integration and guest co-creation mechanisms. Relevant metrics include booking conversion, AI resolution rates, cross-channel engagement, co-creation participation and net promoter score (NPS). Ethical implementation requires transparency, opt-in participation, privacy safeguards, accessibility and human escalation options. Social implications Human-centered phygital hospitality requires safeguards against digital exclusion, surveillance and loss of human warmth. Transparency, agency, equity, privacy and non-digital alternatives are essential for inclusive and trustworthy service innovation. Originality/value The study advances PH-CX as a theory-extending framework linking usefulness, co-creation, embodied experience and ethical safeguards in immersive hospitality. It also proposes experience-design orientation as a future research profile and offers a phased implementation framework for responsible phygital service design.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Services Marketing, 2026 · DOI ↗