What is Hotel TV Casting All About?
In the past, hoteliers were perceived as early adopters of cutting-edge in-room entertainment platforms.
With amenities like satellite and cable television, on-demand movies and internet access at the forefront of the hospitality industry, hotels were the gold standard in entertainment — and often provided a better experience than guests had at home.
But the emergence of content streaming powerhouses like Netflix, among others, over the past few years has opened an ever-widening gap that the legacy industry’s technologies cannot cross.
Some owners of properties have attempted implementing smart TVs only to find guests worried about data privacy issues or systems that can no longer be updated to new streaming services launched. Strongly outperforming hotel environments as well as the alternative, hotel casting systems have increased in popularity, as they are able to avoid the bulk of the problems troubling alternative in-room entertainment solutions.
But not all hotel casting systems are created equal and choosing the right solution can be the difference between a guest enjoying their experience or not. Follow them to find out what system characteristics and capabilities should be a must-have in searching for an in-room entertainment system that will inspire rave guest reviews.
WHAT IS HOTEL CASTING?
A hotel casting solution aims to offer an accessible and secure process for guests to cast streamed content from personal devices onto guestroom TVS over a wireless connection. Sadly, designing a solution that is both easy to use and easy to customize seem to be two points that often escape many of the hotel-designed casting solutions.
Hotel Casting Solution: What you Should Look For
To embrace a successful in-room entertainment strategy, this means catering to a bevy of guest expectations melded by consumer-based technology capabilities. The best quality hotel casting system should always feature the following to guarantee a high rate of satisfaction for every guest:
Simplified Setup
An effective casting system must therefore appeal to guest expectations with intuitive interactions and minimal steps required for guest device connection to arrive at the ability to stream content from personal subscriptions. To avoid this frustrating experience that also carries a risk of damaging reputations and profitability, ensure the system avoids the following as part of its experience:
- Asking guests to download an app
- Filling prodigious device registration forms
- Requests for sensitive user login credentials
- Personalized Streaming Experience
Due to the burgeoning expectation for content streaming services, guests have also become accustomed to hotel room experiences that are just as dynamic, albeit with more viewing options and platforms. Each guest has their own preferences — so the responses hoteliers provide need to be tailored to be of any use.
Casting solutions tend to share compatibility with the top-tier subscriptions that everyone has, like Netflix or Hulu, but more and more streaming offerings are getting added all the time to guests’ wish-lists, and we’ll all want to watch more content on more services.
Thus, a better casting solution for hotel business operators should à expand compatibility with variety of streaming mobile apps This makes it easy for guests to decide for themselves which one meets their current tastes.
Since travelers from all over the world are frequently welcomed by hotels, a streaming solution that is more compatible with streaming services is important when satisfying customers that are attempting to access the same services they utilize in their native nation.
User-Friendly Interaction
A cumbersome, difficult-to-navigate system requiring staff assistance is the last thing a hotel guest wants to run into. Understanding that it simply needs to perform some useful tasks that invites interaction if it feels at all to compete among guests or on any kind of scale and even a system that promises fast responsiveness and reliability will struggle to provide when it does not offer that feature of practical use that it is very easy to work with.
What businesses do instead is discover solutions that succeed at eliminating obstacles hindering instantaneous guest streaming capabilities. Examples include:
- Registration of Devices Based on QR Code: Guests scan a QR code that will be displayed on the screen of the TV to wirelessly connect their device and start casting.
- Quick Stream Buttons for Streaming Services: Hotel guests and other visitors who like more traditional means of interacting a guest room TV will have a more pleasant experience if they’re able to navigate via a conventional remote.
- Easy-to-navigate Dashboard: In order for a property to benefit from widespread adoption, it should take an honest look at a solution user interface to ensure that it provides an easy experience even for guests who are not tech savvy with new streaming technology.
Increased Security & Privacy to Meet Guest Expectations
And with only 10 percent of guests saying they are not concerned about potential data privacy and security risks at hotels, this is certainly something businesses are going to want to consider when choosing the right streaming solution.
Returning to our smart TV example, many guests may understandably be wary of entering sensitive login information on a device as public as a smart TV. It could expose usernames, passwords and, possibly, even credit card details to theft.
To solve these known concerns, hotel businesses should prioritise analysing a solution’s security and privacy. These are some effective features to watch for:
- Guests should enjoy a username/password-free streaming account experience: In most cases, guests who are connecting personal devices wirelessly to a streaming solution should have the opportunity to cast content without validating their login credentials on the guestroom TV.
- Device Isolation for Streaming Devices: Since hotel streaming devices will often share the same internet network, solutions with advanced device isolation capabilities prevent guests from accidentally or intentionally casting material to TVs in other rooms.
Deploying Stream with One Minute of Work
While it might be tempting for some hotels to buy a consumer-based streaming solution supposedly designed for use in a consumer home, the complexities and operational requirements of a hotel environment makes many of these platforms unsuitable and incompatible.
By recognizing a solution purpose-built as a streaming channel solution for hotels, businesses can avoid any potential problems with commercial TVs and internet networks commonly used in the industry. Superior security protocols which are often not present in consumer platforms — like device isolation — also serve to increase guest confidence and sit higher on the list when it comes to touching the device and interacting with the system.
Reliable Online Connectivity
Dependable connectivity is perhaps the most requested amenity that a hotel can provide to guests today. Hotels must modernize and assess the quality of their connectivity on an ongoing basis to provide a good in-room entertainment experience like uninterrupted web surfing and high-quality video streaming.
The decision-making process of a hotelier in picking a new entertainment solution should also consider how it can affect their existing networks. These findings can help them determine the types of rewiring or network equipment upgrades that might be needed to meet the demand for connections that would accompany a state-of-the-art entertainment network.
More sophisticated in-room entertainment systems can provide a point-and-click matrices that do not simply track solution performance but enable near real-time analytics on Internet quality for every guestroom with a device connected. Hoteliers must look for an end-to-end solution that incorporates this capability, enabling hotel staff to take a proactive approach in identifying and addressing any connectivity issues before they result in an impact on guest experience for any guests during their stay.
