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

We were recently reading a story in HotelChatter (http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2009/1/14/114310/100/hotels/Hotels_That_Twitter_and_Twitter_Well) about hotels that use twitter, and use it well. It got us thinking about all the different ways social media is being used in the hotel industry and made us really think about our own social media strategy. Ever since we’ve jumped on the Twitter/Blog/Social Media train, we’ve seen many of our colleagues, friends, customers join and every day we are connecting with more people. 

We don’t only blog every week because we love the opportunity to rant a little, we blog because our audience wants something new to read each week. We try to keep the information relevant and useful. Just like our Rule #20 of Selling, “Keep your Bloody PowerPoint Slides simple”, it’s important to us to keep our twitter account and blog active, relevant and interesting.  

According to an article on HospitalityNet (http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4045836.html), Social media can have a dramatic impact on your brand's reputation. 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog and 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs. We’ve had excellent feedback from partners, customers and even some from competitors that tell us they like reading our blog, so we’re not going to stop anytime soon. A blog/twitter account is an excellent way to go direct to people who are badmouthing or complaining about your product or service and engage them. Go meet them head on and you can often end the problem. We use our blog a lot to praise cool friends we met from the industry or talk about issues that we think are pretty dumb or very interesting, but sometimes you just need to use your blog to stand up for your brand.

At Acentic, we are always about engaging people. We want hotel guests to have an engaging stay at the hotel of their choice, with all the entertainment amenities they could ever dream of. In the social media world, we want to hear feedback from those guests, hotels, and anyone else that may be reading. We want to know what our customers, partners, media, friends and competitors think.

We’re still asking ourselves what the best way to communication via social media is. It is a learning process, but in the meantime, if you’re not already getting in on the action, the real question is Why aren’t you? We aim to be part of the group that HotelChatter says is doing a “Killer job of utilizing the micro blog platform.”

At Mobile World Congress this year in Barcelona, there were many new ideas centered around making your mobile life better. Some of them had the cool factor, from an interface from Swedish TAT which lets you identify a person’s face via your phone camera and deliver not only profile information about that person but also show you their latest status updates, to green mobile technology such as MyFC which makes fuels cells and chargers so you can charge any mobile or laptop, extending the battery life of your portable device.

Then we saw it. The lifestyle technology that we knew we would see in hotel rooms next. We know we will see it because for the past decade, hoteliers have been transforming their hotel rooms into more of what the guest is used to at home. From the way we search for content on TV and surf for movies, to the lighting around the bed versus the lighting around the work spaces – hotels have been creating a lifestyle experience. You see companies like Philips creating a new dynamic around mood lighting in hotel rooms, TV’s that feel like they belong in our living rooms, and Acentic which creates the technology giving you access to programming and content that parallels how we interact with our computer.

So what is this new discovery that  completes the lifestyle experience of the guest? The furniture. Now if you combine the furniture with our busy mobile lifestyles and the hectic pace of the business traveller then the lifestyle technology we saw at Mobile World Congress is just what hoteliers will be doing next. A Finnish company, Powerkiss www.powerkiss.com has said goodbye to the cables that go along with charging your portable devices including mobile phones. Their solution – work with furniture manufacturers and imbed a charging device into the furniture. All the guest has to do is attach  a pin into the device and place it on the furniture with the device built in and the mobile phone charges automatically. No more need for cables or for adaptors that don’t work anyway.

Technology has moved away from just code and software to practical applications that make your life better in a more direct way when you are away from home. 

 Guest blogger: Jennifer Hicks, Founder , ink Communications, marketing consultant, Acentic

We are happy to announce that we have entered into a strategic partnership with WAYS TECH S.r.l., the Italian IT infrastructure provider for some of Italy’s best hotels and financial institutions. This partnership will allow us to increase the level of service to your guests and staff to better serve our hotels as a single source for digital TV and high speed internet access (HSIA) for the hotel guest room. The Milan-based WAYS TECH Hospitality Solutions will combine strategic direction, with the hands-on service that WAYS TECH provides, together with the former Acentic Italy staff and most importantly the team of over 20 site engineers and account managers carefully located throughout Italy.

Our new venture with WAYS TECH will combine our technology with the Italian best in class service standards of WAYS TECH.

With all the growth in 2010 for Acentic, we are pleased to announce the strengthened relationship with WAYS TECH. This investment allows us to continue to extend our digital TV and HSIA services to offer a broader product portfolio to our existing Europe customers as well as expand to Asia and the Middle East.

Acentic has just celebrated its sixth Christmas as a company and this year's present from Santa was by far, the best yet. Two days before Christmas a delivery arrived in the form of a binding offer to buy a controlling stake in Acentic from ISM Communications Corporation (ISM) and Philweb Communications (WEB).

These two public companies listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange have joined with Niantic Holding, a German company controlled by Dr. Andreas Jacobs, to invest in Acentic to further extend our technology offering throughout EMEA and launch Acentic Asia to serve the Asia and MiddleEast markets.

According to Lodging Economics’ latest Asia Pacific Pipeline Report http://tinyurl.com/China-India-HotelConstruction the Asia Pacific hotel pipeline is the second largest in the world and this region has two of the fastest growing economies in the World, China and India, with more than 208,847 hotel rooms in the pipeline in China alone.

We are very excited about our new owners as they have vast experience in our field. Not only are they the previous founders and owners of one of World's largest hotel technology providers but clearly can also spot talent (hee-hee) and their current businesses are in the field of IT and gaming.

Our current product offering of Digital TV services, High Speed Connectivity and Worldwide media and content is currently in Hotels belonging to virtually all of the major global brands and now having the opportunity to support their needs further afield is very exciting indeed.

We’re looking forward to the changes and growth this new dynamic brings to the Acentic family in 2010 and beyond. As a company that has always been dedicated to customer service and quality products, we are still dedicated to keeping our hotels happy and helping them deliver the best in room services possible to their guests.

We have just come out of the noughties, so what is this decade called? The teenies? The booming teens…. (let’s be positive) the twenty tens?

Whatever. There is much to look forward to: We have the football World Cup, always good for anyone’s business, the Winter Olympics, the Ryder Cup, Andy Murray is going to win his first major and Scotland will win the six nations. You don’t get much more positive than that to me.

There are some great films to look forward too as well. Wall Street 2 (as mentioned in a previous blog), Up in the Air with George Clooney, Robin Hood with Russell Crowe (yawn!), the final books of Harry Potter and Gulliver’s Travels with Billy Connolly….yeehaaa.

It’s at this time of year that I, and I suppose many other managers in my position, need to galvanize our teams and launch them into the new year with confidence, optimism and a sense of fun. My first award of the year and “Cool Friend of Acentic” goes to Emily Somers. Emily works for the Glove division of Medline and created, choreographed and directed the attached film, which was created to promote awareness for breast cancer in a hospital in Portland, Oregon. When the site gets a million hits, Medline will give a large contribution to the hospital and free mammograms to the community.

To persuade everyday people do extraordinary things is inspiring. I invite you to do the Pink Glove Dance and be inspired.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEdVfyt-mLw

I am willing to bet that this is probably the first blog in the world to have this heading... However the Prince said in a YouTube video during his Design Council Awards what we all know; that is that the average TV remote is too smart for its own good.  See the video here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091010/wl_uk_afp/britainroyalstelevisionoffbeat

I recently attended a major global ICT (Information Communications Technology) trade fair where I came across a TV manufacturer’s stand with a whole display of their remote controls from past years. It was fascinating for a moment.

At Acentic we say that we have less than two minutes for the hotel guest to navigate the remote and the GUI (Graphical User Interface). That is why we do not use the standard TV remote.  Don’t get me wrong we respect our TV suppliers enormously, however the remotes are made for consumers who have time to lie on the living room floor to read instructions. Acentic is currently challenging its already KISS remote for the next version. If you have longer than two minutes watch this insightful video on design, if not don’t worry because our R&D have already watched it for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W8lESZ2XNg

P.S. An easy to use TV remote is one less guest issue. Happy button pressing!

Mobile Applications

Since the launch of the iPhone and many of its competitor products, thousands of mobile application companies have sprung up across the globe hoping to cash in on the mobile gold rush. They develop games, gadgets and genuine working applications. Some of these will survive, many won’t for various reasons; bad luck, bad products, and shallow business models such as, “doing it for the sake of it”. What it does prove however, is that the mobile device is fast becoming a tool designed to increase productivity. Thousands of widgets are freely available allowing developers to adapt web sites to mobile devices. Widgets are fast becoming the hot new thing, so we should all learn what they are. Widgets are very powerful but light web programs, which developers can easily modify to create their own applications.

Does this apply to Acentic’s presence the hotel industry? Absolutely! Acentic has created a radiant HSIA administration and reporting tool that is an easy to use, touch button web based interface. It allows hotel staff to interact with the administrative tool via the web using all mobile devices. Imagine the revenue manager taking a quick peek at HSIA revenue stats on his way to a board meeting, or even in the meeting. The technical director can check the HSIA network status at 3am because he can’t sleep worrying, or even the conference organiser can allocate HSIA conference access whilst waiting for a meeting with his next client. Mobile applications are changing the way people do business everywhere and understanding the value of them while building things that work with them, Acentic is allowing hotels to stay productive and increase their effectiveness. This is an example of Acentic’s 8th Rule of Selling, “Solve Problems and Create Profitable Opportunities.”

It's always interesting to see the evolution of a trade show and the time it takes for the technology highlighted there to actually reach consumers. Within the broadcast industry, the key show in Europe is what we’re all talking about, IBC. IBC covers just about every field of broadcasting from content management to studio mixing all the way through to interactive services for viewers and satellite transmission. As such Acentic attends every year because whilst the hotel industry has its only specificities when it comes to technology its is important to use proven standards and to understand what will hit the living rooms in the future.

Ten years ago when Acentic first started visiting IBC, Digital TV and Video on Demand were the buzz words at the show, its fascinating to see that only now are consumers starting to receive VoD services at home. That’s a ten-year lag for the most mature consumer markets, probably a lot longer for many emerging markets. Interestingly enough, back then hotels were already offering VoD providing guests with total control over recently released blockbusters. For the last 3 to 4 years it has been High Definition Television that has taken the front stage at IBC with all sorts of predictions about consumer take up and services. We don’t think HDTV will take over ten years to develop - in fact HD broadcast services are starting to develop rapidly in Europe, whether its via PayTV providers or free to air offerings through digital terrestrial. HD VoD however has yet to take off significantly.

At Acentic, we believe its important to work with leading industry players in order to deploy HD VoD to hotels before it even figures on the service offerings of most consumer providers. The industry needs to work together with standards based systems so that cost effective HD solutions can be rolled out to the hotel industry bringing a new exciting viewing experience to guests, an experience which guests may once again have to wait several years to see in their living room.


Visit our link on the IBC 2009 official blog:
http://www.v-net.tv/BlogDisplay.aspx?id=141

A hotelier was telling me the other day that in their view interactive in-room entertainment was a thing of the past and that guests were no longer interested in such services. Possibly very true, when a hotel doesn’t invest in the latest technology and services. However, when a modern system is placed in a hotel we note that the usage of services is actually increasing. This is a reflection of the consumer environment. Looking at the 2Q 09 results of one of the largest PayTV operators on Europe Virgin Media, they have announced a 3.8% increase in average revenue per user (ARPU) on the 2Q 08 results. And this increase comes despite challenging economic times. The increase is driven by the increasing number of users that take multiple services i.e. HSIA and Digital TV but also by the increase in the usage of various available TV services. Amongst these services, Virgin highlights Video On Demand, as well as HDTV among the services that usage is increasing. Virgin’s VoD service is now used regularly by 53% of their subscribers and there were 62 million VoD views in 2Q09, up 38 Million views from this time last year. In fact the popularity of on demand services is highlighted as one of the factors in the record TV viewing figures reported by the BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) in the UK, with average daily television viewing reaching three hours and 45 minutes per individual. That is up 3% from 2007 and at one of the highest levels in recent years (BARB Bulletin March 2009). Clearly, despite the increase in broadband and PCs, the television remains the key viewing device in the home.

As such, we at Acentic expect to see an increase in the take up of our services as guests become regular users of on-demand services at home and seek to adopt the same behaviour within hotels. The advent of HD will just reinforce this trend.

Sources: 1) Virgin media 2Q 09 results, 2) BARB Bulletin March 2009