The smart phone is here, who needs a TV? If you listen to the hype surrounding these wonderful machines you could actually remove the TV from the hotel guestroom, thereby ensuring a fairly hefty saving. I played around the other day with some different smart phone applications. Put aside the feeble battery life of most smartphones, I sometimes wonder whether they are meant to be mobile or not. Also aside from the screen size, which had me looking for my glasses and left me with a headache after my various trials, these phones are actually quite amazing.

The first application I downloaded enabled me to watch the BBC world service live. Quite amazing! but after half an hour on the world’s latest disasters I was thirsting for some more mundane entertainment and so I downloaded the application enabling me to watch the top 20 channels of my PayTV provider. Again, pretty neat I thought, as I zapped between channels and watched some intellectually less challenging content. Having lost a couple of viewing points in each eye, I had to give up, switched on the TV to find that actually most of the channels were on there anyway. I tried again a few days later whilst abroad and there it suddenly struck me that due to license issues most of the content wasn’t available where I was. When I finally did find appropriate content that worked the 3G network, it was obviously under pressure and I had to put up with constant buffering. When I got home I also noticed that there was no buffering on the phone bill- nice to see that the Telecom Operators are still able to generate high ROIs!

On my next trip I had learnt my lesson and decided to connect via WiFi to use my smart phone. Interestingly enough the hotel’s HSIA system wouldn’t allow this. My conclusion was that the TV still remains key in the guest room and that the SmartPhone WiFi access Acentic builds into its new HSIA solution, Horizon, will ensure that many guests won’t see their phone bill go through the roof.

Acentic prides itself on bringing the latest blockbusters to guests as rapidly as possible after their cinematographic release. Usually the studios release content to the hotel industry just after it’s been released in cinemas and to the airline industry, and of course, many months before the DVD release or consumer PayTV service offerings. For frequent long distance travelers its often frustrating to only find movies in hotels that they watched for “free” (everything has a price somewhere) on  the plane. Whilst the experience is obviously not the same- the bed or armchair is much more comfortable than the average airline seat and a LCD screen brings a much better viewing experience- many travelers have been content with watching the latest in-flight movie and found the hotel offering lackluster.

This is however evolving, yesterday (or is it today- I guess it depends on which time zone I base myself on) I found myself on a 12 hour flight during which I ate, drank and after the laptop battery failed (not before I hasten to add) I turned to the excellent in-flight entertainment system. I selected a very recent fast-paced action movie (the kind that I would never watch at home because of differing movie tastes with my wife), and sat back and enjoyed it. Stunning scenery and breath-taking action shots were all slightly let down by watching it on a 14 inch screen and my neighbor snoring. I left the plane with a slight backache and having noted the title as a future blue ray acquisition and checked into my hotel. To my surprise this major movie promotion was the very same title as the one I saw on my flight- and in addition it was available in HD on the 37 inch LCD. So not only are we at Acentic immediately getting the latest movies into hotels through our always on satellite upload, we are also now delivering on our Panorama HD platform the latest HD movies with stunning picture quality. I now know what I will be watching this evening in HD to ward off jetlag. And by the way I would never have got around to watching that blue ray at home…

Held every two years, the Ryder Cup is the only place to be for those with a passion for golf.  This year, the event will be held at the Celtic Manor Resort on the outskirts of Newport in South Wales.  With 2008’s Ryder Cup drawing just over 243,000 people, 2010 is set to be a huge event with hundreds of thousands of people from over 100 countries around the world.  To make the most of the event and fully enjoy the Ryder Cup 2010 at the Celtic Manor Resort, guests and attendees are going to need clear and practical information on the different aspects of the event, the venue and the festivities. 

Sure most people will be watching the greatest players from Europe and the US battle it out on the course, but during the downtime they’ll want to relax in their room with the television programming they are used to.  The Celtic Manor’s owner, Sir Terence Hedley Matthews, wants only the best in guest room technology for all the Ryder Cup attendees and believe me, Terry knows his technology, having blazed the high tech trail by founding some of the biggest name tech companies in the UK. That’s why we’re helping the Celtic Manor take the next step to provide over 500 TV and radio channels so that there is something for everyone and local programming for all the international guests. We’ll be showing all the greatest golf flicks such as, Caddy Shack, Tin Cup, Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, The Greatest Game Ever Played, etc. Also families and children can have plenty to watch if they aren’t interested in what’s happening on the green.
But we’ll also be giving them an entertainment experience that they’ve never seen before when they turn on the TV and see the Panorama and Philips Ultimate HD system. And what goes better with sporting events than HD television?  Guests can watch multiple HDTV channels and movies in their downtime, which the Celtic Manor could only offer with the help of Acentic.
Now all the Ryder Cup attendees can just sit back, relax and look forward to witnessing the greatest players from Europe and USA do battle and absorbing the atmosphere of this thrilling biennial tournament! I’m looking forward to see who makes the putts!

In a recent chat with Alistair Forbes, Acentic’s former CEO, we got talking about differences between mainstream digital TV services for the public at large and those in Hotel TV systems.
I realised during our chat that hospitality has surmounted some specific challenges that could teach a lesson or two to mainstream TV services.
Since then, I’ve been browsing through Acentic’s blog and come to realise that hospitality TV also has some key advantages over mainstream TV. In fact, when I add them up, there’s actually more things that are real challenges for mainstream IPTV and much easier to achieve in a hospitality environment.
Foremost amongst these is the ability to deliver a predictable quality of experience or ‘QoE’. The technical service delivery is facilitated in particular by the in-room networking, which is for example fully known in a hotel, contrary to home networks. I’m not saying it’s easy, just that it is manageable or at least predictable.
On the content side, hotel IPTV has some key advantages too with access to premium content well before it is available in people’s homes. Also on the content side, hotels usually cater for short stays and can offer a much-reduced line-up of on demand content, concentrating on blockbuster and adult where appropriate. The VoD navigation / recommendation issue may still be hard to solve, but at least it is solvable contrary to mainstream TV services that are currently totally lost on this issue. Many recommendation platforms are vying for position but none have yet provided a convincing solution to the VoD problem on the sitting room TV. The best efforts seen so far, in the mainstream area, are from the likes of Comcast or Roku and are more based on a slick graphical representation of the content than recommendation itself. Netflix is the movie recommendation standard by which others measure themselves but isn’t really a TV service, yet.
So much for what a mainstream TV consultant like myself could contribute to hospitality TV. But what are some of the lessons I could I try to learn to bring back to my mainstream customers?
Hospitality TV services have faced two obstacles that none of today’s mainstream TV service could defeat. Both are linked to the user.
First, there is the 15-second factor I mentioned in a recent Videonet blog. A hotel visitor will devote about that length of time to the room’s TV set initially. If she gets the feeling that there is something worthwhile there, she might explore a bit more, but rewards must always come in seconds.
This brings us a fundamental issue in user interface design. When I was a software developer back in the 9O’s, the graphical user interface design would phase would start with a look at whether the intended user base would be made up of casual-users or power-users. A casual-user, like a hotel guest, has very little time to invest in learning the way around an interface, whereas a power-user typically uses the interface for hours at a time and is more interested in shortcuts than user friendliness. In trying to resolve this conundrum we often went too far to one extreme. Even power users want some friendliness and even newbies need a bit of power…
Hospitality TV vendors that serve both Hotel and Hospitals will be aware of this issue as they serve the two extreme cases: people who still have their coat on as they flick through the TV menu wondering whether to go out and bed-ridden patients that have all day to understand where to find the service they want.
The second domain where hospitality TV has a lot to teach is in serving a user base that is a fast moving target. Hotels have guests from all countries of the world. Language is the most obvious issue, but other subtler aspects can be harder to capture like respecting the Sabbath, hiding adult content or showing the weather of a visitor’s hometown. Channels are often available in the hundreds and VoD content in the thousands.

I hope one day my work will take me into the hospitality sector to have this exchange. I’m sure there’s a lot more we have to share than what I mention here. In the meantime there is a clear challenge ahead for both mainstream and hospitality TV: a meaningful integration of Over-The-Top content so that the Web enriches the TV experience without jeopardising its business model.

Ben Schwarz publishes on Videonet News (www.v-net.tv) and on his own blog http://www.ctoic.net

Today, I am proud to take the helm at Acentic as the new CEO.  I’ve been with Acentic since the company was founded in 2003, have seen the many changes we’ve gone through as a company and have helped to create a great brand with innovative technology.  I am proud to have worked now for nearly 20 years in the media industry and look forward to providing continuity and stability for Acentic's employees, partners, customers and new business prospects.

We have a lot of exciting news coming up in the next few weeks but remain committed to our core business and product offering of Digital TV services, High Speed Connectivity and world-wide media and content in hotels. I look forward to working with all of our employees, partners and customers toward new technology and business goals while increasing guest satisfaction, revenue from high speed internet and content offerings in hotels all over Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

We plan to make new and existing customers a continued priority, dedicating ourselves to customer service and quality products.  We always want to keep our hotels happy to help them deliver the best in-room services possible to their guests.  We look forward to the changes and growth the Acentic family has to look forward to in the foreseeable future. 

Thank you,

Richard Robinson, Acentic CEO

As we enjoy the thrill of the 2010 World Cup Football (or WM in Deutschland) the diversity of nations fascinates me together with the diversity in relationships that are forged between players, spectators and sponsors continuously in sport. However sport equals business, my old rugby coach used to say as we limped off the park. “Hard day at the office lads”, this wasn’t sarcastic it was actually his recognition of our achievements and it was through his innate leadership that not only were we a successful team but we looked forward to his compliments. The one thing I could never understand at age 23 was how he knew every single opposition coach, every single referee, over half of every spectator crowd and they all treated him with a high degree of admiration, almost ‘Godfather’ like.

I did some research on both sides of the Atlantic and came up with two true Football leaders:

Vince Lombardi: Lombardi, was capable of motivating ordinary men to do extraordinary things. He didn't have great players in Green Bay, he MADE them great players.

Jock Stein: "Jock, you're immortal", Shankly told his great friend in the dressing room after the 1967 European Cup triumph which marked a first for a British team. What's more, he did it with a bunch of Glaswegians.

However, my thoughts were still on the linkage between sport and business. After more reading I found some research on Stephen I. Sadove, chief executive of Saks (that fabulous store that Carrie and the girls made even more famous) and I found my answer to my old rugby coaches respect: Leadership and Relationships equal Positive Culture. Here are two responses from Sadove’s recent NY Times interview:

Q: What were your biggest leadership lessons?
A: I used opportunities to get involved and develop relationships with a diverse set of people, as opposed to the narrow group of people I was dealing with day-to-day, and that made a huge difference. It shaped my philosophy in terms of the importance of relationship-building. It really underlies my entire philosophy of how to run a business.

Q: How do you hire?
A: Well, clearly you want somebody who has the intellectual capacity, strategic thinking and the skill sets. But I’m looking for a cultural fit with me. How collaborative are they? How inclusive are they? How willing are they to listen to lots of different points of view? Do they have diverse interests?</P> <P>I now know why my old rugby coach was not only patient with me, but always interested in me as a person.

Thank you Sir!

I went hunting for some new shoes the other day. It’s incredible how dragging your feet through Europe’s airports actually wears the soles thin. So, as I went through the effort of wandering out to the shops and trying on multiple pairs of shoes, all of which were either too big or too small, I reflected on the return on investment for the sales person patiently serving me. Surely the margin on those leather-soled shoes wouldn’t pay for his hourly salary, shop overheads and its advertisements in the local newspaper. Having finally settled on a pair of rather fetching brown shoes, I rushed to the sales counter to pay and tear off away from the world of shoe shops.  At that point I realised why the sales person had been so patient. Suddenly I found myself purchasing a shoe polish, a special brush for this specific type of leather and that all important water proofing spray that one absolutely needs for an English summer.

How often does that happen when you are at the reception counter in a hotel? Not very, but as some of our customers have proved to us, it can work. Tonight I am in a hotel room having benefited from a 20 euro upgrade which provides me with breakfast, HSIA and all you can watch PayTV. An easy up sell by the hotel reception. With Avatar released Europe-wide, hotels should surf on the hype and let their staff offer great deals to guests and generate some extra revenue for the hotel.

Twitter is being used to predict the future box office takings of films courtesy of researchers at Hewlett Packard. They have studied 3 million tweets about 25 different movies, including Avatar. (is there no privacy??) Apparently the rate at which messages are produced can be used to forecast box office visits before opening. The faster people tweet about a film, the more likely they are to go and see it. They say its “tapping into collective intelligence” and word of mouth builds audience. Their analysis predicted that the zombie film “The Crazies” would take $16.8 in its first weekend and it actually took $16.06m. The forecast for “Dear John” was $30.7 and it took $30.5.

These guys have developed algorithms to analyse tweets in the run-up to a film launch measuring the rate at which they were produced….”Get a life” springs to mind.

Avatar which actually took $232.2m on opening weekend, will showing in Hotels using Acentic systems.

Recently spotted in a hotel bedroom: An alarm clock with the following instructions written on the top:
 
1. Press and hold the “Alarm 1” or “Alarm 2” button until the “Alarm time” appears on the display. Press the “settings” knob and the “alarm hour “ will blink
2. Rotate the “settings” knob to change the hour and press to set
3. Rotate the “settings” knob to change the minutes and press to set
4. Rotate the “settings” knob until “source” appears on the display and press to select I-pod, buzzer, AM or FM and press to set
5. Rotate the “settings” knob until “exit” appears on the display and press to exit

Honestly, after all that would you be confident that your alarm will go off at the right time? Just use the TV system…it’s much more simple!

Instead of boring you with more Iceland ash jokes and airport tales of woe I am thinking positively about airports and hotels. Whilst waiting for news and fielding calls from my staff that they finally reached their destination, I realised why I love this job after 20 years in the hotel industry. I love the camaraderie. It doesn’t matter who you work for; hotelier, cleaner, supplier, consultant, it is times like these when the industry shows its strength under stress against all adversity.

Acentic staff members that were stranded in airports and hotels have told me their stories of outstanding service, especially in relation to turnaround times and “feeding the masses”. As for these hotel services, our quick thinking German operations are also part of the team. When this crisis broke, our NOC deployed additional overtime coverage to monitor the systems, especially our 40K rooms with High Speed Internet Access, which we knew would take a hammering these past weeks. I am exceptionally proud of my staff’s well-played part (while working quietly in the background 24/7) to produce a 99.3% digital services uptime!

Speaking of airports I was recently reading an article about world’s “best” airport (Votes were calculated before the whole air transport crash due to the volcano) http://ehotelier.com/hospitality-news/item.php?id=D18363_0_11_0_M, and it made me recall the hours I spent in each of them, using their unique facilities. Indeed Acentic has its systems installed in Hotels at all of the European hotels in the  top 10 of this list!

Understanding the customers’ needs in order to optimise products and services is what this industry is all about and what adds value to our business! Working with our hotel customers is certainly the best job in the world, keep it up team!

Travel safely.