Imagine you’re in a hotel room, waiting for delivery of food and drinks. The hotel is inside a nature reserve. There is a knock on the door. You open it and find an animal bearing a tray with your order.

The animal looks almost identical to your favourite character from a legendary animation movie. It is cute and cuddly and not scary at all. After a moment you realise it is a service robot. Some South African Millennials and Gen Zs would prefer to interact with service robots that look like animals at nature tourism destinations.

This view of service robots surfaced in a January 2026 study in the Journal of Tourism Futures by Professor Gijsbert Hoogendoorn from the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Pretoria and Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

Twenty South African millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), and 20 South African Gen Zs (born between 1997 and 2010) from a variety of cultures were interviewed for the study. The study is intended as an initial exploration to identify key questions and viewpoints before conducting a larger study.

The study found that some young people would prefer service robots to look like animals, however. Opinions varied a lot about what service robots should look like and what they could mean for jobs.

“The Gen Zs were slightly more orientated towards the social justice aspect than the millennials,” says Hoogendoorn, who is a Professor in UJ’s Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies.

“The Gen Zs were more like, what about the jobs? What about the inequality? The millennials have experienced life a bit more. They did highlight it, but it wasn’t their biggest issue. They were more inclined to think they don’t want technology with them in a nature-based destination.”

Of the 40 participants in the study, about half (21) imagined they would prefer interacting with service robots that look like animals at nature-based tourism destinations.

One woman imagined a robot Labrador dog carrying luggage in its mouth, as a friendly, familiar presence, because she had a Labrador dog at home. Others thought something resembling local wildlife such as a warthog, or an impala, would “fit the environment”. Some who preferred animal service robots, thought that robots looking like people would be creepy. One said “If I see a robot that looks like a human, I’ll go the other way. It’s not natural or normal. I don’t like that”. However, another nine participants would prefer service robots to look like people.

Says Prof Hoogendoorn: “People raised on the Lion King movie have a fundamentally different mental model of wildlife, than someone who knows a that warthog can easily bite your thumb off, as happened to my friend. Their nature-comfort is mediated by cartoon and Netflix, not lived experience.”

A much smaller number of participants said they would prefer service robots to humans. One participant stated they opt for robots because of the “anxiety” they feel when “interacting with people in some contexts”. Another said that “you’re never going to feel stupid asking a question to a robot,” as a machine will not get annoyed if you ask a “million questions”. Others noted that robots do not have “bad days” or wake up “on the wrong foot,” which can negatively impact a tourist’s experience.

In Scandinavia and Asia, self-service is normalized and populations are shrinking, says Hoogendoorn, which means that service robots fill a labour gap. In South Africa, service robots could threaten to further reduce available jobs.

While there are many studies on service robots in hotels and airports globally, this is the first to focus specifically on a nature-based context. In South Africa, nature-based tourism represents a significant part of the industry and potential for job creation.

Research article

An exploration of the potential use of service robots among millennials and Gen Z’s in nature-based tourism destinations”, which appeared in the Journal of Tourism Futures on 3 January 2026, at https://doi.org/10.1108/jtf-01-2025-0011