In the run up to the Tour de France, a client asked me if hotel guests could experience the well-known cycling race in 3D in their rooms. The answer at the time was unfortunately no as the event was not rebroadcast in 3D, compounded by the lack of standards and 3D hotel mode TVs.

However, we at Acentic decided to research how to potentially bring a 3D experience to our customers. Two Acentic employees were volunteered to this task - myself, Juan Aguirre, and our CFO Stuart Radcliffe. With 3D supposedly being as close to reality as one can get, we both decided to enter in a similar, but not quite equivalent experience to the Tour De France. That is The Royal British Legion’s Pedal to Paris cycle ride, taking place Sept. 1-5, 2011.

Our 22-rider Team Manpower, co-sponsored by Acentic, will join 300 others and embark on a four-day, 480km trip from London all the way to Les Champs Elysees. The event raises money for the fine institution that is The Royal British Legion to care for serving and ex-members of the British Armed Forces and their families.

In addition to fund raising, we see this four-day trip as valuable research into what a 3D Tour de France experience should be, albeit our cycle seats won’t be as comfortable as a living room armchair and our Lycra outfits are probably the last thing you want to see. However, whilst you await that 3D hotel experience (could be some time yet), please don’t hesitate to support our efforts at the following websites:

http://www.justgiving.com/juan-aguirre  or  http://www.justgiving.com/TeamManpower2011

All donations will go directly to The Royal British Legion. In the meantime, Stuart and I are busy training, shedding kilos and looking forward to a beer on the Champs Elysees as a reward for our four days of effort.

Acentic attended the Dubai Hotel Show last week and we showcased our Panorama HD integration with the new LD650 from LG. This show was the ideal event to showcase Acentic’s ability to deliver a cost effective IP solution with no in-room Set-Top Box. With the integrated solution from LG and Acentic,  IT departments at major luxury hotels no longer have to deal with disconnected rooms caused by removed cables. They can say goodbye to the simple day-to-day housekeeping of in-room systems with a simplified system installation. We did have some dubious visitors at the conference that believe the STB under the furniture is still the only way, but even they were impressed by the form factor and the speed of the Acentic Flash interface’s channel zapping times. Acentic is looking forward to further deployments in the Middle East region where we can leverage our Dubai network operations centre and local teams. We had a great show and had some fun, we even saw the most optimistic sales person we’ve ever seen at the Dubai show: a company that shall remain nameless actually selling outdoor heaters, tough sale with the outside temperature hitting 40 degrees C!

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!

Last week I visited the International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin where this year’s theme was "Charting the course for intelligent growth"… Splendid!

I attended sessions that discussed the value of the brand and process and offering standardization…(We do like processes when things are tough … “that’s why it’s all gone wrong. You didn’t stick to the processes”). I met with members of the finance community who thought that the “hotel industry just isn’t appealing enough for our money at the moment.” (their money?).

In the hope of seeing for myself the course for intelligent growth, I attended the session entitled “Best practice to survive the downturn and take advantage of the upturn” which I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed. One of the panellists had some wise words. He stated that the Hotel industry has never been a three to five-year cycle in which to make returns, it has always been a long-term business in which you need to hold over two cycles lasting about 15 years and the industry needs to find lenders who will stick around! Very true, I thought, but good luck with that one!

It was in this session that it struck me that any current successes lie in process improvement, refinancing, cutting costs, outsourcing, etc. But there was not one mention of PEOPLE.
When we are all growing at a zillion miles per hour, it’s because we have the best people. Here is what you hear: “It’s our people that make the difference“. ”We put people first”. “You buy our products, you buy our people”. But when it all goes belly up, it’s the market, the recession, the bankers, the last thing we are going to do is spend a penny on those costly employees.

“It’s only about people in the good times”. That must change, it must always be about the people in the good times or bad times.

I attended a hospitality IT conference this week curious to find out about the latest happenings and the hot topics. A couple of old favorites appeared to take-over. The first was, of course, about the value of the in-room telephone, its migration to IP, the revenue generating opportunities it may bring and the great functionality these IP digital phones have. Well, 4 years down the road and still no one has presented a valid business case with actual usage statistics. I wonder if we aren’t beating a dead horse? 3DTV was of course discussed but again how many of you have it at home? Hotels still have to roll out SD and HDTV to hotel rooms before we can start thinking about 3DTV. A vote was held to understand how many guests made real use of all the technology in the room. If my memory serves correct, the general agreement was that for an investment to be really worthwhile a 60% usage rate was necessary. That figure rules out the hotel restaurant, bar and fitness area! In fact, such a usage rate rules out just about everything except the bed and the television system which tend to hit 100% of usage providing those that do use the bar manage to make their way back to their room.

The plenary session was our friend Mr. Levy from Citizen M.  He highlighted how important it was to understand what the guest wants and then look at the technology. He stressed, this was the order, NOT the other way around. Imposing technology upon guests simply does not work. Instead we should all look at what mainstream consumers use everyday (not us techie geeks, but REAL consumers). They all use their bed, they all use their TV and from the incredible figures we see from TV operators around the planet they increasingly use non-linear or On Demand TV. They do not use expensive interactive IP phones at home and they rarely connect their laptops to their TV screen in the living room. In the future I would suggest that hotel technology conferences should follow Acentic’s Sales Rule number 20: “Keep your PowerPoint slides bloody simple.”

I’ve been at HITEC this week in Anaheim California. The attendance is way down on last year but I guess that’s to be expected. As I wandered down the aisles looking for some inspiring new technologies and at the same time dodging the sales people who are dragging innocent bystanders onto their stands, I stopped at a stand which had more customers than most. In a bit of a daze ( because these events are quite tiring and always too hot) I suddenly twigged that there was a bizarrely dressed man standing high up on a podium with a microphone strapped to his head. He was a magician about to start his show!!! Fantastic… I love magicians!

He was brilliant. He would ask a member of the audience to pick a number between 20 and 60 or something like that, and as they figured out what half of it was, he was filling out a 4 by 4 grid out with 16 numbers. Then, when the punter was asked what her number was, he drew attention to his grid in which every line, in every direction added up to HER NUMBER! … Genius!

The crowd dispersed and I wandered off to find coffee thinking to myself “maybe we should have a magician with numbers in Acentic” (only joking Stuart). As I sat down with coffee I had a more alarming realization which was that I had  just stood on a stand for 15 enjoyable minutes but have no idea what they sold. I must review our marketing to make sure that the message is clear.

What event is happening this week where you can see Quentin Tarantino’s new movie? It’s the same place that was featured on the HBO show, Entourage, when the boys screened their movie there; it will be the place that screens Heath Ledger’s very last film and this week it will host all of Hollywood’s elite?  The answer is: Cannes Film Festival, one of the oldest, most influential and prestigious film festivals in the world. This year Acentic will be there! Well, we’ll be there with our digital TV system in the hotels of Cannes showing a new trailer area on the hotel’s TV system to coincide with the festival.

Acentic’s all new Welcome Page now includes a dedicated movie trailer area. Acting as the ‘default’ page on the iTV platform, this page is enabled the minute the guests are checked into their room, meaning that as soon as they step into their bedroom, they know exactly what great movies are playing in the hotel.

It’s good for the hotel because the Welcome Page is a great platform to support the hotels branding and brings with it the additional dynamic of playing movie trailers helping to increase revenue. It’s also good for the guest because they need to stay on top of what films are out there if they’re going to be rubbing elbows with Francis Ford Coppola and Brad Pitt.

Cannes visitors (whether they are launching a film, career or reputation or just visiting in the hopes of running into celebrities) can relax in their room and check out the trailers for new films that are available to watch on demand.

I visited the International Hotel Investment Forum this week in Berlin, at significant cost I might add, so I was pretty keen to get something out of it. There was an air of pessimism, certainly on the first day, coming from most people I interacted with. The exception was the more senior, publicly listed company representatives. No dirty washing in public sort of thing.

There seems to be an ocean of people who are now feeling so depressed that not only have they become resigned to the fact that they are in deep trouble, they have told everybody else that they are in deep trouble. And then we all have a good laugh about it. Ha ha ha ha…how we laughed.

On the second day, I attended a session entitled "Mitigating Collateral Damage and Maximising Opportunities" and was well pleased that I did. There was a highly qualified team of panelists and it struck me as the session started, why on earth was this room not full? With other sessions being about Russia, management agreements, brand confusion, leases, developers and Turkey, you would have thought that any presentation with "Maximising Opportunities” in the title would have people hanging from the rafters!

The session was full of great practical advice and discussion. Some of the comments I noted:

• Do something uncommon, introduce common sense.
• Check that your suppliers are in good health.
• Don’t fall out with your partners - get closer to them.
• Search for the best people as others are cutting staff.
• Accurate and realistic forecasting is the biggest challenge.
• Seek to package your business in a different way.
• Don’t focus on RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room). A 12 percent drop in RevPAR could be a 26 percent drop in EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization). Think cash.

Overall, it was a great discussion and it is becoming clear – we cannot "save" our way out of difficult times, we have to "sell" our way out. And that’s where the fun and creativity begins. Apple, for example, seeks to provide what the customer should want rather than what he thinks he wants. Neat.

I enjoyed the session immensely. Difficult questions without all the answers, but a willingness to really take them on. Optimism grows on you.