Hotel operators have embraced AI chatbots with enthusiasm. Adoption rates keep climbing. Yet a fresh wave of academic research exposes an uncomfortable truth. Many travelers find these digital assistants unsettling. The discomfort runs deep enough to derail bookings.
A study published this month in the International Journal of Hospitality Management delivers clear data. Researchers from Texas A&M surveyed 340 adults in the United Kingdom who had used chatbots while booking hotels. The results paint a picture of rising friction. Inaccuracy stands out as the dominant problem. It triggers a negative reaction more than four times stronger than other shortcomings.
Chatbots quote wrong room rates. They bungle cancellation policies. They dodge straightforward questions. Such lapses do not merely annoy. They produce what the researchers term creepiness. That feeling cuts willingness to continue the conversation by nearly 38 percent. It nearly doubles the odds that a guest will delay or abandon the booking entirely. Texas A&M AgriLife Today reported the findings in detail last week.
Babak Taheri, professor in Texas A&M’s Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management and Tourism, led the work. “Chatbots are rapidly becoming a critical element of hospitality service,” he said. “But when chatbots try to sound human and fall short by giving inaccurate prices, dodging questions or behaving inconsistently, users don’t just get annoyed – they get creeped out, and they leave.”
The study applies the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework from consumer psychology. It traces how specific chatbot failures generate discomfort and then shape behavior. Three flaws dominate: inaccuracy, deceptive or inconsistent conduct, and perceived intrusiveness. Inaccuracy dwarfs the others in impact.
Researchers also document the uncanny valley at work. The closer a bot mimics human speech, the more jarring its mistakes become. “Users implicitly expect a human-like system to behave like a human,” Taheri explained. “When it doesn’t, the gap between expectation and reality triggers something deeper than disappointment. It triggers a threat response.”
Digital Trends covered the research hours after publication. The outlet highlighted how the study confirms what many guests have felt instinctively. Its article notes that the creep factor hurts conversions at a time when AI travel tools from Google and Uber are gaining traction.
Industry momentum tells a different story on the surface. A March 2026 report from Canary Technologies found 82 percent of hotels expect AI usage to expand across their organizations this year. Eighty-five percent plan to direct at least 5 percent of their IT budgets toward AI tools. PR Newswire carried the release.
CoStar Group examined the trend in January. Eighty-nine percent of consumers, according to a prior Booking.com survey cited there, want to use AI when planning travel. David Sjolander, vice president of HTNG operations at the American Hotel & Lodging Association, acknowledged the shift. “In our industry, things don’t usually change very fast,” he said. “It’s usually pretty slow and AI is forcing us to move a lot quicker than we are used to moving.”
Sjolander pointed to recent gains. “Up until the last year probably, chatbots were really bad. People who tried to use them, ended up not being successful, so I think they have a kind of a bad reputation. So, getting over that, and people figuring out that they’re really good I think will take some time. They’re already making a big difference, and they’re going to continue in 2026.”
Charles Oswald, CEO of Aperture Hotels, struck an optimistic note. “It’s absolutely going to be another building year, but you know, with each building year, I think we do a better job of predicting business levels, using these systems to better prepare and plan for our existing operations, new developments and acquisitions alike.”
David Jordan, senior vice president and chief information security officer at IHG Hotels & Resorts, described concrete benefits. “We’ve clearly taken advantage of AI in our chatbots and had a lot of success through that. When we’re taking millions of calls every year, being able to push some of those to chatbot technology is the right thing to do for both parties. It reduces our human-to-human interaction, and therefore the workload there.”
Yet the Texas A&M findings introduce a cautionary counterpoint. Transparency offers one straightforward remedy. When a chatbot opens with a clear statement such as “Hi, I’m your AI assistant,” users grow more forgiving of errors. They attribute mistakes to machine limitations rather than trickery. The disclosure does not eliminate every negative reaction. It does blunt the sting of inaccuracy.
Taheri and his co-authors urge hotels to pair disclosure with easy escalation to human staff for complex matters. They call for continued investment to strengthen the underlying models so bots can reliably handle pricing, availability, and policy questions. Running controlled experiments on different disclosure timings and wording would help operators refine their approach. “Competence without transparency doesn’t solve the problem,” Taheri said. “Hospitality companies need both if they want customers to trust AI-powered service interactions.”
The tension sits at the heart of current adoption. Hotels chase efficiency and cost savings. Guests bring heightened expectations shaped by fluent large-language-model experiences elsewhere. Chatbots that once felt novel now face scrutiny against ChatGPT or Gemini. When they stumble, the gap feels wider. And. The emotional response proves stronger than simple frustration.
Broader data supports the surge. A 2025 h2c global study cited by Apaleo showed 78 percent of hotel chains had already integrated AI, with 89 percent planning further expansion within 12 to 24 months. Chatbots led the applications, followed by business intelligence and personalized experiences. Apaleo’s analysis framed the numbers as evidence of accelerating change.
Hotel Tech Report’s Q1 2026 rankings of hotel chatbots reflect operator interest. Vendors that integrate deeply with property-management systems and enable both pre-stay booking support and in-house requests score highest. Seventy percent of guests in their surveys find chatbots helpful. Fifty-eight percent believe AI can improve their stay. Those perceptions, however, erode quickly when accuracy falters.
The Texas A&M team published its paper at a moment of peak enthusiasm. Major platforms push AI trip planning. Robotics appear in more properties. Yet the research underscores that technical capability alone falls short. Human psychology resists imperfect imitation. Short sentences. Clear disclosure. Reliable facts. These elements matter more than sophisticated language models.
Operators who treat chatbots as simple cost cutters risk alienating the very guests they seek to serve. Those who combine transparent design, rigorous testing, and seamless handoff to humans stand to gain loyalty as well as efficiency. The data leaves little room for ambiguity. Creepiness is real. Its commercial cost is measurable. And hotels now possess practical steps to address it.
Further studies will test variations across cultures and property types. For now the message travels clearly from the academy to the front desk. Get the basics right. Tell guests what they are talking to. Keep the information accurate. Do those things and the technology can deliver on its promise without the chill.
Hotel AI Chatbots Boom Yet Leave Guests Uneasy, New Research Shows first appeared on Web and IT News.