Majority of Guests Think Hotels With Interactive TV Are Superior
At the 4th Annual LodgeNet Customer Technology Symposium in Chicago, speakers and attendees discussed emerging media consumption trends among travelers. Executives from LodgeNet Interactive Corporation commented on how the company’s strategy addresses those trends.
Company representatives cited internal and third-party research which reveals the following about how travelers are accessing content and interacting with media technologies inside and outside of hotel guest rooms:
- A LodgeNet survey of upscale travelers indicated that two-thirds of hotel guests perceive hotels that have interactive television as being superior, more innovative, and more modern than those that do not have the service.
- Guest usage of Envision, LodgeNet’s new interactive HDTV platform, is three times that of the company’s predecessor interactive HDTV platform, based on LodgeNet’s internal usage tracking.
- Travelers are heavy consumers of media. The average hotel guest spends more than three hours a day watching TV in the guest room.This individual is also substantially more likely than the average U.S. consumer to watch movies frequently (either in a theater or on pay-per-view), look up directions or local information on a mobile device, and download podcasts from the Internet.
- LodgeNet premium video on demand (VOD) programming ranks as the fifth most-viewed entertainment channel, with only the broadcast networks and a premium cable channel being watched more.
- 60% of Hollywood movie content sold in hotels is in the “premium VOD” hotel window, which is generally 60 days before availability on DVD and up to 90 days before release to streaming services such as Netflix. (A 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey confirmed the value of this early window by noting that more than half of respondents ranked faster access to content as the most appealing feature of premium VOD.)
- Local recommendations are highly valued. In a 2011 survey of travelers by Monitor Venture Services, more than 95% ranked local recommendations as important to them. The same survey also revealed that guests prefer to access that information on a TV.
- Only a small fraction of hotel guests (1.5%) connect their personal media devices to the in-room TV, and that usage rate has not changed appreciably over the past two years (based on 2009-2011 set-top box data; Nielsen measured).
- 40% of users aged 18-34 prefer to control their TV viewing experience with a smartphone or tablet, based on recent data from Altman Vilandrie & Company and Research Now. LodgeNet will be releasing its Mobile TV Control App by the end of this year.