result

Almost half of the respondents were males (50. 8%), aged 25–34 (38. 4%), and had a Bachelor’s
degree (37. 0%). The common age group for the mobile app users fell under 18–49 years old;
thus, respondents of this study was consistent with the popular mobile app age group. According
to the Pew Research Center (Smith Pew Research Center, 2015), 82% of persons aged 18–49
years owned an app-enabled mobile phone, as of 2015. In addition to respondents’ demographic
information, their previous hotel experiences were asked. Almost 45% (44.3%; n = 135) of the
respondents have stayed in a midscale hotel, followed by an upscale hotel (38.7%, n = 118),
luxury (14.1%, n = 43), and budget hotel (3.0%; n = 9) in their recent hotel stay. No respondents
have stayed in Resorts, Bed and breakfasts, and other accommodations in this study. In addition,
almost 45% (n = 136) of the respondents took 3–6 trips a year, followed by 1–2 times a year
(25%, n = 75) and 7–12 times a year (20%, n = 61). Detailed respondents’ background
information is provided in Table 1.

Data collection A quantitative survey approach (Bryman & Bell, 2015) was used to investigate
smartphone application consumption experience and its impacts on tourist behavioral intentions.
A self-administered survey questionnaire using closed questions was used to collect information
from participants. According to the Taiwan Tourism Bureau (2015), the Kenting National Park,
in the southern beach area of Taiwan, is one of the top 3 tourism destinations for domestic travel.
This study conducted a survey of consumers staying in Chateau Beach Resort, Gloria Manor, and
Howard Hotel in the southern beach area of Taiwan in March and April of 2015. The general
managers of these resorts were contacted by the researchers in order to acquire participation
agreement; after receiving the participation agreement from three resorts, three well-trained
graduate students conducted an on-site survey of hotel consumers. The participants were
approached in the hotel lobby and asked whether they were willing to participate in the study.
Following previous studies on mobile marketing (Persaud & Azhar, 2012; Watson, McCarthy, &
Rowley, 2013), the target population of the study consisted of individuals who have used
smartphone apps to search for hotel and accommodation information at least once in the last six
months. As suggested by Ozturk, Bilgihan, Nusair, and Okumus (2016), the participants in the
study were chosen by asking screening questions regarding previous travel app experience. This
convenience sampling approach was useful for collecting data where the respondents shared the
characteristics of smartphone app usage for hospitality and tourism purposes (Watson et al.,
2013). The study collected 490 valid samples, and the response rate of this study was 89%. Prior
to conducting the survey, a pretest of the questionnaire was conducted to examine construct
reliability with 133 samples. For the pilot test, tourists who have the experience of using
smartphone apps in the southern part of Taiwan were recruited to participate in the pretest and to
assess logical consistencies, ease of understanding, and task relevance. Suggestions about the
structure of the questionnaire from pretest participants were incorporated in the revision of the
questionnaire. In addition, Cronbach’s alpha was used in the pilot test to identify poor items, and
the correlated measure items were eliminated.

Results In terms of demographic characteristics of the respondents, females accounted for 55.5%
of the respondents as shown in Table 1, and of the respondents, 57.8% were 26 to fortyfive years
old. A majority of respondents (64.5%) reported college as their highest level of educational
attainment; 53.8% of the respondents were currently employed in the business and service
industries, while 15.3% were students. In terms of the consumer’s usage of the mobile phone
app, as seen in Table 2, the results found that 68.8% of consumers had used a mobile phone for
over three years. Nearly 90% of the respondents reported that they had used mobile apps within
the past year. Fifty-two percent of the respondents had 1–2 types of hotel and accommodation-
related apps in their mobile phone. Forty-one percent of the respondents reported that they had
booked the hotel via mobile phone apps. Eighty percent of the respondents had used the mobile
phone apps to search for restaurants and food, as well as tourist destinations. According to Byrne
(1998), the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) process was adapted to examine the causal
relationship among the proposed constructs of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness,
experience, and behavioral intentions. As Yoon, Lee, and Lee (2010) suggested, SEM is
designed to evaluate a series of interrelated dependence relationships among a set of latent
(unobserved) constructs, and hence was found to be suitable for this study. Prior to SEM, a
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to assess the convergent and discriminant
validity as well as the composite reliability of the factors for each construct (Anderson &
Gerbing, 1988) by using EQS software. Following Bigné, Andreu, and Gnoth (2005), the
Maximum Likelihood
Social-demographic Traits Frequency %
Gender
Male 178 44.5
Female 222 55.5
Prefer not to answer
Age
18-30 152 38
30-45 166 41.5
45-60 66 16.5
Over 60 16 4
Education
High school & Junior high school 79 19.8
College 258 64.5
Graduate school 63 15.7
Area
United States
South America
Europe
Asia
Other .
Hotel Consumer’s usage of Mobile Apps Frequency %
Owning a smartphone
Yes
No
Being aware of hotel mobile apps
Yes
No
Downloaded hotel mobile apps
Yes
No
Features
Check-in/ Check- out
Booking Reservations
In-house Services
Rewards Account
Customer Care
Benefits
Convenience
Appearance
Information
Rewards Program
Services
Overall experience/Satisfaction
I would be interested in joining a rewards program
This app improved my hotel experience
I was satisfied with the functionality of the app
I would use this app again
I would recommend this app