Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how hotel guests can be nudged for more active engagement in hospitality plate waste prevention and moderation at buffets, through designing effective persuasive interventions. Plate waste is a main sustainability challenge, and it is considered one of the major drivers of food waste in the hospitality sector, whose operations generate excessive amounts of waste. The hospitality industry, featured by all-you-can-eat buffet-style settings, is somehow encouraging consumers to increase the amount of food ordered or taken and not been eaten.Design/methodology/approach: This study reports a field experiment conducted in a real hotel setting, where persuasive interventions were targeted to consumers at the croissants buffet, when guests were making their selections. The research tests the persuasiveness of functional and experiential appeal messages to nudge hotel guests towards a more active engagement in avoiding plate waste. Each single treatment was carried out for three weeks in varying sequence.Findings: The findings are based on 63 rounds of data collections and show the superiority of experiential appeal messages in positively influencing guests’ behaviour. This implies that appropriate messages can persuade tourists to avoid plate waste in buffet-style settings, especially if these messages are grounded in participatory cues with an emphasis on altruistic values.Originality/value: This is one of the few studies that empirically tests the effectiveness of different persuasive interventions in a real consumption setting, thus measuring actual behaviours which have been rarely studied. This study further contributes to the identification of concrete communication tools that can help to mitigate plate waste generation.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the challenges (barriers) and opportunities (drivers) of adopting artificial intelligence in the hospitality industry by exploring how individuals at different hierarchical levels within hotels perceive the benefits and obstacles associated with artificial intelligence adoption. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts a consensus mapping approach to analyze insights gathered from interviews with 55 information-rich participants, representing diverse hierarchical roles within the hotel industry. Participants are categorized into three distinct groups: top managers, first-line managers and nonmanagerial employees. Findings: By using a consensus mapping approach, this study ascertains individual perceptions regarding the barriers and drivers influencing the adoption of artificial intelligence within the hotel sector. Study findings underscore artificial intelligencés potential to increase operational efficiency and enhance customer experiences. Notably, top managers prioritize the pursuit of competitive advantage, whereas nonmanagerial employees emphasize the significance of cost-saving benefits. Despite these benefits, a noteworthy hesitance is observed across various hierarchical positions, largely attributable to factors such as lack of awareness and understanding, as well as resistance to change. Originality/value: The originality of this study is twofold. First, it offers a basis for tailored communication strategies aimed at strengthening awareness and acceptance of artificial intelligencés adoption across various hierarchical groups. Second, diverging from prevailing customer-centric perspectives, it uniquely focuses on employees’ perceptions, thereby providing new insights into the unexplored and multifaceted dynamics of artificial intelligencés adoption within organizational contexts.

There is very limited research on point-of-consumption/point-of-purchase interventions to promote more ecological and healthier food choices among tourists. To fill this gap, this paper analyses the impact of different factual appeals including information about taste (placebo), nutrients, carbon footprints and distance of transportation on food choices of tourists at hotel salad buffets. The research pursued a randomised field experiment in two Italian hotels adopting a 4X2 between-group experimental design (appeal content X endorsement). In addition to measuring the actual consumption of salad vegetables by weighting, a short survey was administered on 329 tourists. By comparing effectiveness of persuasion along a continuum of self-benefit vs other-benefit appeals, this experiment finds a higher effectiveness of pure self-benefit appeals stressing healthiness or mixed self/other-benefits stressing local origin, compared to other-benefits that focus on ecological friendliness. These findings are in line with the idea that egoistic and selfish-altruistic motivations dominate in tourism consumption over mere altruistic motivations.

This paper aims at exploring the impact of green food on consumers’ purchase attitudes toward a hotel stay and on consumers’ behavioral intentions (i.e., intention to visit the hotel, intention to offer positive recommendations to others and willingness to pay a premium price), focusing on an Italian perspective where the food is a worldwide famous cultural element. This research employed a survey sent out by email to a database of contacts provided by an Italian company that operates in tourism. Data collection was completed in four weeks and the initial dataset counted 3586 of target respondents. A total of 302 surveys were completed and the data were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM). Firstly, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed, followed by a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) that leads to the estimation of the structural model. The results show that personal beliefs toward green food are positively associated with respondents’ purchase attitudes toward green food. Moreover, stronger purchase attitudes toward green food lead to more favorable purchase attitudes toward hotels that offer green food, further substantiating the investigation about whether or not consumers’ attitudes employ similar concerns on sustainability for their daily purchases as well as for vacation products and services. In turn, the latter purchase attitudes are positively associated with individual behavioral intentions toward hotels that offer green food.