Contactless service has gained popularity in the hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the safety of customers and employees. This study extends the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2), incorporating optimism and trust, to explore the use of contactless technology in hospitality service encounters. Importance–performance map analysis (IPMA) is applied to evaluate the performance of latent constructs and enrich the findings of PLS-SEM. This study contributes to the existing literature on hospitality service innovation and technology acceptance, and has managerial implications for service design in the context of the challenges posed by COVID-19.