SMARTreport - Deuromedia

SMARTreport
© photo: Mandarin Oriental
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PMS and so on, just as CCTV and
telephone which is now IP as well, and all
of that is wired and wireless. So the main
functional and discreet separate networks
that a hotel typically did install on
separate unique cable systems is, at least
at the Mandarin, a fully converged
network today. We’re just months away
from opening our first hotels that have no
Coax for TV and they have no Coax to
drive CCTV. All of those things are on the
IP network today.
On Cat 5 or Cat 6?
All Fibre! Fibre to the rooms is going to be
a very useful technology. The same model
that telcos are using to take fibre to the
home... that same basic technology, when
you translate it into a fibre to the room,
has some basic advantages. It is subtly
different from a Cat 6 Ethernet model. It’s
more configurable and you can do more
with it. You can reserve elements of the
bandwidth over the fibre to do interesting
things. So it’s definitely a technology that
we’re actively investigating.
How is the use of content changing in the
field of in-room entertainment?
One of the other things we should
absolutely be aware of as hoteliers is that
a vast amount of content walks into our
rooms every day, brought in by the
guests. Whether it’s a USB stick with a
film on it or some form of audio or video
content, or whether it be an i-Pod or i-
Phone or whatever, a huge amount of
content is walking into our rooms, and for
Hotel SMARTreport • October 2007 – April 2008
us to be able to make use of that is a very
important thing – providing easily
accessible methods whereby a guest who
has a small and portable device which is,
by definition, very restricted in its picture
and sound quality... to plug that into a
room and make full use of the room to
entertain them or inform them for the
period of time they are there... I think it’s
a really important thing, because one of
the things I think have trained ourselves to
believe is that a guest has an awful lot of
time in our rooms to be entertained and
that is simply not true. The whole notion of
a feature film being a relevant piece of
content in a hotel room is bogus! I don’t
think it ever was correct, but it certainly is
bogus today. People don’t have that time,
and the viewing figures support that it is
irrelevant. So today, really it’s 30 minutes,
and it’s what you choose to do in those
INTRODUCTION
30 minutes. Increasingly what we’re
seeing is that those 30 minutes are being
filled by guests’ own content. It’s that “Let
me be me for 30 minutes and make me
feel human again. I think it’s a very
important thing that we should focus on
and try and satisfy. The ability to be able
to tune into “u-tube” or the guest’s own
DVR via Sling-box or other similar
technology I think is also immense. Things
that were considered teenage or geeky in
the past are now very much mainstream.
You have to be a little bit visionary, but
you don’t have to be VERY visionary to
figure out what people are doing today.
You’ve just got to be open to it and
understand that those expectations, if
they’re met, contribute to your room rate
and occupancy, and if they’re not met,
contribute negatively to your room rate
and occupancy.
© photo: Mandarin Oriental
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