Joanna Santiago

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About

Joanna Santiago is an emerging researcher whose work sits at the dynamic intersection of hospitality technology, consumer behavior, and service automation. Her scholarship focuses primarily on the adoption of robots, artificial intelligence, and service automation (RAISA) within the restaurant and foodservice industry, examining how customers perceive, engage with, and ultimately accept these transformative technologies. Santiago's most influential contribution, "Embracing RAISA in Restaurants" (2023), has already garnered 57 citations, a remarkable achievement that signals its significance to the rapidly growing field of hospitality automation research. In this work, she contextualizes technological disruption within the broader arc of human innovation, framing AI and robotics as the frontier of a fourth industrial revolution. Her continued investigation in her 2025 study on robotics and service automation (RSA) further deepens this inquiry, exploring the interplay between technology integration and the quality of the human service experience. What distinguishes Santiago's research is its practical relevance — her findings offer actionable insights for restaurant operators navigating the tension between technological efficiency and customer satisfaction. For students and researchers studying digital transformation in hospitality, her work provides both a theoretical foundation and an empirical roadmap for understanding the future of service delivery.