Hotel TV and The Future – Part One

Hotel TV and The Future

The first post I made on this subject is here and talks about the succesful #LinkedInLive broadcast I did with FunnelTV. While the focus was guest room technology in 2020 we focussed almost totally on Hotel TV. The topic became so interesting and the excellent feedback from our viewers meant we stayed pretty much at the top of our agenda. What’s amazing, is we’ve got much more to say in the future.

If you, like me, think sharing of knowledge is beneficial, please get in touch. I’d love to be able to facilitate the sharing of knowledge through my site, blog and FunnelTV.

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A Hotel Technology & Travel Technology blog by HotelTCS. Every week we cover topics concerning Technology in the Hospitality Industry. Looking at subjects such as IPTV, HSIA, WiFi, GPON and IoT, we give you the insider info on Smart Hotels and Intelligent Hotel Deployments. Subscribe below for updates!

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Just a reminder, we were joined by the following excellent guests:

Enzo Aita – FunnelTV

Christoph Hutter – FunnelTV & Revenue Consultant

James Harrison – HotelTCS

Nick Price – NetSys

Darren King – ROOMNET

Hannu Vahokoski – Hotelway

Joe Griffin – Hotelway

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Hotel TV Part One

As I said before, the long agenda went out the window. So here’s part one, all about Hotel TV.

The Death of Video on Demand was Just The Start

It’s clear that Hotel TV has been a moving target over the years. As Darren quite rightly pointed out, there was a point when walking into a Hotel room, and being about to watch the latest movies releases on the Hotel TV was something quite impressive. The shift of course to On Demand content and OTT delivery across home viewers habits, has left us in a situations where this is much less impressive. Certainly Video on Demand has declined massively and isn’t something that will necessarily wow your guests anymore.

Accessing Content is Now Second Nature

It has become clear that accessing content whenever and wherever is now second nature to people. It’s expected. If people are to use a device they need to use it to access whatever is theirs! This is where OTT comes in.

Now there are two camps. The BYOC – Bring your own content camp and, BYOD – Bring your own device camp. In hotels this boils down to 2 opposite avenues.

Bring your own content is enabling guests to access content subscriptions through the devices in room, such as a TV. This would be an OTT app for Netflix or one of the many other providers that they can log into. This is a direct replacement for the Video on Demand solutions previously installed in many hotels.

Bring your own device on the other hand, is mainly casting. Using devices in the room to enable guests to cast content from their own device onto the in room screen. This is a more direct replacement for the HDMI sockets and USB ports that were once so prevalent.

The key take away here is managing identity. Nick made this point very clearly. If you manage the identity and access to the content through that identity you will get uptake.

“I don’t know anybody that streams from their own device at home.”

Nick Price – NetSys – March 31st 2020

The other point he made was on casting/BYOD. It is true that at home people access content via subscriptions on their devices. So why in a hotel would they want it any different? Let me know in the comments below? Do you want to log in to your apps in a hotel, or would you rather cast your content?

Nobody Turns the TV On Anymore

A few years ago we saw a big shift, one that resulted in people not turning the TV on at all. In an ever connected world of instant gratification, content everywhere and social media, the TV seemed very antiquated. Almost boring. With a long list of TV channels, nothing really grabbed anyones attention.

This resulted in the big switch off. Fortunately, we have seen this reversed, by spending time to understand what the guests actually want on the TV. Whether you are in the BYOD or BYOC camp, this is where you will get those Hotel TV screens back on!

11 years ago we thought accessing content was all about HDMI sockets and USB ports. How wrong we were! I’ve already provided more thoughts on this here.

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Thanks As Always

I say this every time, but thanks to the over 500 live viewers we got during the show and all those who commented, you were fantastic! The interaction makes the knowledge sharing so worthwhile. I’d also love to hear people’s suggestions on what else we should cover. Let me know in the comments below!

Part Two in the series – Managing connections and identity is now available here!

In a coming series over posts of the next 2 weeks I will cover in more depth what we talked about, for those who missed it. Make sure you subscribe to our mailing list to keep up to date with all the latest posts! Remember to add info@hoteltcs.com to your safe senders list!

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Hospitality tech VLOG

If you want to see more of the recordings, they are now up on my Youtube Channel The HotelTCS Hospitality tech VLOG! Click the button below to subscribe and view!

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I hope you are all a passionate as I am about sharing the knowledge. watch out over the coming days and weeks for more posts on the fascinating topic of Hotel TV. Please also connect with me on LinkedIn and follow HotelTCS for even more conversation and knowledge sharing!

Also, please check out some of my other articles, such as “A Hotel is Just a Building”, “Can Intelligent Hotels find their voice?” and “The Fate of Hotel HSIA”. The latter being referenced in the VLOG!