I struggled the other day a while at home with connecting, reconnecting and then trying to hide the cabling and power lead from my new set top box (STB) to my TV. The STB is a most unsightly piece of material in my living room bringing with it yet another remote control. The hotel environment remained free of such boxes for years and hoteliers were always proud of being cable and power-supply-free. Then suddenly all this changed with the move to digital and the necessity for additional functionality to distribute digital channels and movies.

In some cases relatively discrete boxes were developed specifically for the hotel industry, whilst in others consumer style STBs were adapted to the hotel world bringing with them their fair share of cabling, power and reliability issues. So whilst many hoteliers had got rid of CRTs, they found themselves struggling with STBs. Leave them in the open and they are ungainly, prone to disconnection and theft, hide them too well and your maintenance staff will waste precious time accessing them.

Thankfully this sudden appearance of the STB in the hotel room will be short lived. This is due to the LCD manufacturers seeking to integrate more and more functionalities into their screens. Our recent integration with the Philips Ultimate HD screen is a sure sign of things to come…a highly powerful core solution with high processing power integrated with the built in HD functionality in the Philips screen. The Philips Ulitimate HD combined with Acentic’s Panorama provides full interactivity, video on demand, digital TV and HDTV to the room without a cable or box in sight. Suddenly I wish I had something as elegant as that at home.

“Innovation is the name of the game,” is a phrase that stuck out when I recently read a piece on Global Tech Trends in Hotels in HotelNewsNow.com (http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx?ArticleId=1632), in which thought leaders in the hospitality industry and hoteliers were asked what the most important innovation in guest rooms will look like in the next 18 months.

The article got me thinking and I asked some of my colleagues what they thought would be important hotel innovations and trends that will emerge by the end of 2010. One of the most intriguing answers was catering technology to business travells that are female.

Female business travellers are a growing segment of the hotel business. According to Harvard Business School (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4611.html), 40% of business travellers are women. Despite their numbers as a growing force in the marketplace, women business travelers still represent a valuable untapped market. Not only are female business travellers a significant part of the industry, but they also make the majority of decisions for their families' personal trips (Source: HBS). Therefore, they tend to demand better technology, amenities and in-room entertainment than their male counterpart.
Hoteliers have started to notice the wants and needs of women business travellers and have started to cater to that segment. Our belief is that in the next year hotels are going to target designing special rooms that will attract female travellers.

Along the same lines, Acentic also believes that the younger demographic of business travellers both female and male is going to be a huge market and Hoteliers are going to need to recognise that they want technical service and agility. Guest rooms and hotel lobby innovations will soon allow these guests to lie on the bed to work via wireless connectivity or sit in the hotel lobby with WiFi. By this, I mean serious ubiquitous WiFi bandwidth at realistic costs.

If you would like to know more about our ‘WiFi to the max 2010’ send us your questions to john.waters@acentic.com

I recently stayed at a newly installed hotel in Paris, a beautiful property that regularly welcomes renowned guests. As I entered my room, I was pleasantly surprised to find a little card from the general manager. It's always a nice feeling to no longer be anonymous and to have a personalized welcome. Written on the card were the words "Welcome to the hotel, a hotel where the TV now works." I had a sense of huge relief that such a seemingly basic service, was now working. There are many ways of delivering digital television in a hotel using a variety of technologies. However, simplicity is key. Your guest will not seek to understand how complex the technology is, they will judge the hotel on whether the television works or not and on the picture quality. Keep technology simple and your chances of it working will be a lot higher. Acentic strives to keep technology simple, reliable and delivering only what guests need.

Whilst we pride ourselves on our technological expertise, we take even more pride in our ability to simplify complex services through the use of proven standards and partnerships with leading technology providers. As I have often stated before, the hotel room is not a laboratory.

There is a new Zombie movie that took Cannes by storm this year called "Colin", a story told from the Zombie’s perspective. Mark Price is the Director (Nowhere Fast Productions) and what is really cool about Mark, is that he put together the whole film for £45… yes pounds! Mark also thinks that Acentic is pretty cool because when some of his team visited the Cannes Film Festival, Acentic were showing his film in their hotel one month before its release (we heard where they were staying).

I spoke to Mark last week about the £45 total cost to find out if it was true. He told me that this was over budget and was his own fault… he turned up to filming one day without any film and had to go and buy some. The rest of the money went on T-bags each day and some biscuits on a Sunday for motivational purposes. Mark said that the biscuits were so cheap and crap that nobody tended to eat them so he just brought them out the following Sunday.

It took Mark 18 months to film "Colin" and all the actors were recruited by advertising for potential zombies on Facebook (they had to bring their own lighting equipment and make-up). Mark said: "one of our make up artists came off X-men 3 so we had the same latex as wolverine"!

When I asked Mark how he managed to motivate people, he said "by being pleasant to them"… I’m going to try that.

"COLIN" out now on DVD and at selected Acentic hotels of course!