IPTV: The New PMS?

The recent China Hospitality Technology Alliance (CHTA) Reload conference in Shanghai was once again a great opportunity to catch up with technology developments  in the hospitality sector. There were some interesting presentations, too. One on wearables, for example, put the recent hype about Smart Watches and their applications firmly in its place by pointing out the current shortfalls, such as battery life, being tethered to a 'mother' device and, most importantly for the hospitality industry, the lack of standardisation and adaptability which is always the greatest impediment whenever consumer electronics enter the enterprise space.  

Needless to say that I found the presentation on IPTV the most relevant.

IPTV Slide Presented at the CHTA meeting

The message from the chair of the IPTV Standardisation group was clear: IPTV is a key customer service platform and as such is just as important for a hotel as PMS. This is quite an exciting shift from just a few years back when IPTV was seen as 'nice to have' as opposed to 'essential'.

The PMS system is of course the holy grail of a hotel operation as it facilitates hosting hundreds of different people, night after night, smoothly and efficiently - albeit by predominantly operating at the backend. IPTV on the other hand, being the connection between hotel backend and customer facing frontend, is the point where enterprise and consumer interface - the holy grail of guest communication if you like (post check-in, naturally). The two together are a powerful package that, if done properly, combine hotel operation and guest communication on one integrated platform.

Standardisation: walking a fine line

The important point with any attempt at standardisation is that it shouldn't curtail the inherent flexibility of an IPTV system. This is a very fine line to walk indeed. Network set up, cabling constraints, content and features - where do you draw the line?

Also, equally important as defining what IPTV should be is to define what it should not be. IPTV is not a computer, and it is not a mobile device - although it should interact and enable both, and across operating systems. But this is why mobile- and computer oriented services such as We Chat, Skype and social media sites should have no room on it, at least not in their original formats. A hotel we have deployed recently, for example, is curating posts from their Twitter, Facebook and Weibo pages and putting them as images on their IPTV platform on a monthly basis. That's perfect: it's entertainment and it has been customised to work on the TV screen.

But with 72% of web page views now done on mobiles, why try and squeeze 

Share of webpage views, January 2015.
Source: wearesocial.net/blog

the square peg of (say) Weibo into a round hole like IPTV, specifically if the user experience can never be as good as on a mobile (think on screen keyboards...)? And let's not forget the myriad security and bandwidth issues that come with turning the TV into a web browser. Again, it may be ok at home, but a hotel is an all together different environment where rules are set by the lowest common denominator: the worst possible scenario, such as someone downloading masses of pirated movies, clogging the bandwidth for everyone else, or people browsing onto dubious sites infested with viruses.

Here IPTV plays a key role as the facilitator that fits the spare pegs into round holes by integrating guests' own devices, rather than trying to replicate them. 

No doubt these points, and many more, will be mulled over as the IPTV Standards group is preparing its recommendations. But no matter what the final document will look like, let's hope it will contribute towards drawing the lines clearer as to IPTV's role in hotels for all parties.