Everybody’s been hyping sustainability over the last decade, at least in the world outside of our industry. Our industry has been quietly talking about it only since a a couple of years. Are we not seeing the benefits of claiming a green image, or don’t we see the (financial) benefits clear enough?

Did you know that research shows that 10% of all travelers would stay at a hotel with a clear sustainability policy, over one that doesn’t?

Surely hotels have been applying the towel-policy but can we call that sustainability?  It’s certainly a good start but we’re still relying on guests, who are ignorant about it and think that when they’ve paid for an – in their eyes – expensive room, they want to make use of everything in the room. Including all of these towels. So perhaps that’s a bad example and it’s not a driver of a hotel’s the green image. But what is driving this and how can we support you?

Just as an example, I recently booked a conference in a renowned hotel chain. In their offer, it was clearly stated that the hotel did everything to reduce carbon emissions during our stay. A good step forward from the towels-policy, but unfortunately not really concrete. Is this already an image builder (good or bad, up to you)?
A well known and successful hotel image builder is the Marriott Green Initiative. This programme is  concrete in terms of energy and CO2 saving and the guest is becoming aware of this throughout their complete experience at the hotel (before, during and after their stay). So it’s rather on a hotel’s core business strategy to differentiate from another while saving money in its operations and communicating this openly to its guests.

Exactly, saving money! And isn’t that what we’re all after? A green image is (only) interesting when it attracts more visitors, and more visitors on the long run can only be achieved when sustainability is considered into a brand’s core strategy (otherwise it may soon come across as fake). When it’s part of the core strategy it will also save costs. So at the end, doesn’t sustainability, when applied correctly, both save money and  bring in more recurring clientele? Then why don’t we see more of these best practices, and why don’t we have one hotel brand in mind which lives and breathes sustainability?

Is there something we can do as technology suppliers? Are we clear enough in our communications, and if we aren’t, what should we improve? Let me give you an example with our PrimeSuite TVs and Acentic’s Panorama as this would be close to your interests. We’re known as not the cheapest solution in the market, and we don’t aspire to be. However, over the lifetime of the product, we offer a better financial result for your operations as we help you save money and build your sustainability strategy resulting in repeat business. Acentic’s system - with PrimeSuite TVs - runs on only a small STB rather than a DVB-tuner or a mini computer, saving you 91% in energy costs. With the PrimeSuite TVs you will save another €20 per year per TV versus the average currently installed sets or competition. The combination of Philips and Acentic results in reduced lifetime cost or TCO, rather than plainly focusing on the initial cost!

Think cost saving, think repeat business, think sustainability. Let us know what we can do to help you!
I invite you to discuss this with us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter (key words: PhilipsHotelTV).

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.

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

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!

Last week we had our Autumn sales conference in the Westin Hotel in Warsaw. We were privileged to have with us as our guest, Jim Lawless. Jim has recently completed a book entitled “Taming Tigers”. His book is structured around ten rules or actions for taming tigers. A “Tiger” is the metaphor for the “thing that stops us”…it roars at us when we consider doing something that will require us from moving into unknown waters and we always intellectually justify to ourselves all the reason for NOT doing it.

We have all read or heard similar recipes for success, but what’s REALLY cool about Jim, is that much of his thinking is drawn from a real life challenge to him during a conference whereby somebody bet him a pound, that he could not become a jockey within 12 months and ride in a professional race, and at 37 years old, he wasn’t called slim Jim either! Against almost impossible odds, Jim won his pound and actually raced in a televised event at Southwell Races, (you can view some videos at www.tamingtigers.com).

What was also cool about Jim is that he drew some parallels to the behavior of our sales folk such as “understanding and controlling your time,” “head in your targeted direction every day” and “never give up”. People always give up on a bad day. Leave it a week and see if you still want to give up.
My lasting memory of my time spent with Jim is when he said to me, “You are writing your own story by the decisions you make. When you are 90 and in the nursing home, you will not have much paper left and you will be running out of ink. Your only story submission will be that you want to win at dominoes today and you hope you don’t smell!”

During our Warsaw sales conference, we visited the LG TV and monitor factory. I know what you’re thinking…how dull. I’m not a process freak by any stretch of the imagination, but if you want to learn about and see in action all those things you read about such as globalization, zero defect quality control, just in time delivery…blah blah blah, then visit the LG factory in Warsaw with 2500 people employed across many production lines. Each line has a moving conveyor, which takes 6 minutes from beginning to end. The start of the conveyor has an empty chassis and off the other end is a fully tested TV which is wrapped, boxed and taped up. Each employee has 6 seconds to complete their assembly task whilst the TV moves past them. If you sneeze, it needs to be quick. As about 5000 TVs roll off each line in an 8 hour shift, there isn’t enough room to store sufficient parts. The SAP system is online to their suppliers who they insist are locally based. The suppliers have to replenish materials HOURLY.

Jang Hyeu Lee, the President of LG, personally showed me around the facility and I was fortunate enough to have dinner with him in the evening so that I could ask him some difficult questions. I expected to be fed an evening of statistics, but the cool thing about Jang, which really surprised me, is that he spends a lot of time on the softer issues. When I asked him to outline his primary responsibilities and activities he said, “To add tension into the organization, if you don’t have tension, discipline and quality will go. The production starts at 6am. If anyone is not through the gates by 05.50, I personally will be talking to them. One cannot enter the factory gates, deposit ones belongings and be at your position to start  whilst breathing normally, inside 10 minutes. You must compose yourself, or you will let your colleagues on the production line down”.

When asked what were some of the greater challenges in setting up in Poland, Jang replied, “Managing sickness levels. Poland had a 10% sickness level. We give the workers production targets. If they succeed them by 10%, they get 5% more pay. They cannot do this without each other. I don’t manage people’s sickness, their colleagues do “ The sickness levels at LG are 0.9 percent.  
Everywhere you went in the factory there were pictures on the walls of individuals or groups involved in activities or receiving awards, in every staircase and every corridor. They take caring and motivation seriously. In hoping to catch Jang off guard, I asked him why if there was only one shift per day, it began at 6am…was there cheaper electricity early in the morning?

“We start at 6:00 so that our workers can miss the traffic and with them leaving at 2, they can meet the children from school.”
Overall we were overwhelmed and impressed with the LG TV factory in Warsaw and by Jang Hyeu Lee.