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