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.

James Harrison
Principal Consultant
HotelTCS

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