Hospitality Services Plus SA, the European leader of high-speed Internet access to the hospitality industry, today announced the purchase of all software assets and intellectual property rights from Broadcast Avenue, an IPTV provider to major luxury hotels in France. Swisscom’s Hospitality subsidiary will leverage Broadcast Avenue’s highly innovative and versatile technology to enhance its guest room offering with audiovisual content and thus to become a “one-stop shop” service provider for the hospitality industry, covering the full range of guests’ connectivity, information and entertainment needs.

A pioneer in the convergence of television and Internet, Broadcast Avenue has developed an innovative and flexible architecture to serve hotels’ IP-based next generation entertainment requirements coupled with an intuitive graphical user interface for the delivery of digital media contents at the guest room. Its solution currently runs in several prestigious 5-star properties including Hotel St. James, the Plaza Athénée, Le Meurice, Royal Monceau in Paris, where guests can select their preferred programs from hundreds of TV channels through a customizable user interface, classified by media, genre, language and country.

Swisscom’s initiative comes at a time when hotels seek differentiation through an innovative entertainment proposition to their guests while experiencing declining revenue with their Pay-TV offerings. In fact, research conducted by Swisscom indicates that guests’ dissatisfaction relates to three main factors: unavailability of programs that they are interested in, limited usage flexibility and low picture quality. Broadcast Avenue’s assets give Swisscom a head start for the development of a new and combined value proposition encompassing broadband services, TV, video and music on demand programs.

“As decreasing Pay-TV usage across the industry evidences, guests feel poorly served in terms of in-room entertainment”, comments Christian Petit, CEO of Swisscom’s subsidiary Hospitality Services Plus. “Many hoteliers have realized that and have acquired, or consider acquiring, large and expensive high resolution flat screens to reinvigorate the guest entertainment experience. However, a flat screen alone will not be enough as optimal picture quality requires digital end-to-end content delivery. Moreover, a total rethinking of the content and connectivity types and formats is necessary if hoteliers want to regain their guests’ attention. This is exactly the direction that Broadcast Avenue has taken, serving the tip of the high-end hospitality industry. Our aim is to build on this expertise, deliver a rich multimedia entertainment experience and make it available to a larger number of hotels and guests.”

Last April, Swisscom’s subsidiary launched Guestroom 2.0, a new HSIA service (High Speed Internet Access) which forms the basis for a personalized, rich media Internet experience at the guest room. Resulting in a further substantial expansion of its product portfolio, Swisscom’s entertainment offering will provide hoteliers with increasing service differentiation while allowing them to procure all guest room technology services through one dedicated provider.

About Hospitality Services Plus SA | Swisscom operates a broadband Internet access network in its partner hotels across Europe and North America under its hospitality-focused subsidiary Hospitality Services Plus SA, spanning more than 2.300 active properties and encompassing 200.000 hotel rooms. Additionally, the company supports close to 10’000 events annually on a global basis. This makes Swisscom a leading provider of broadband Internet-based services to the hospitality industry: Swisscom services are available in well-known hotel chains such as Hyatt, Hilton, Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Marriott, and NH.

Ida Hammar
Marketing Executive
+46 (0)8 555 685 26
HOIST