Turnkey Business Creating Local Attractions Channel for Area Hotels

Overview:

Local area businesses are always looking for ways to attract patrons. In tourist areas travel brochures and magazines are often distributed at hotels to drive patrons to restaurants, shops, and local attractions. This method of attracting patrons is in dire need of a technology upgrade. One entrepreneurial media company is doing just that. A new business was born using existing brochure customers, a little creativity, and some technology from West Pond. This company is producing advertisement videos and local attraction infomercials for playback as a TV channel in area hotels. The infomercial strategy is similar to the one used by Disney and other mega park resorts to drive hospitality guests to resort attractions and hotel amenities. The new channels are enhancing guest experiences while increasing revenues for local the hotel amenities, restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues.

Goals & Challenges:

1. System for creating and managing multiple TV channels at multiple hotel properties
2. System for processing video files to ensure they are TV compatible
3. System for distributing video files to hotel properties.
4. The ability to manage multiple TV channels at multiple properties
5. Solution must be easily installable by tech savvy prosumers, not IT/AV professionals
6. Solution must have a little or no impact on the properties internet usage
7. Equipment/service costs must scale with opportunity

Solution:

Using a cell phone camera, some PC skills, the West Pond FlexStream MX-100CC channel creator, and West Pond’s FlexDM remote management, this company created a new business by producing and managing local attraction TV channels for hotel properties. The firewall friendly MX-100CC Ethernet connects to the hotel LAN and self-configures for remote access. The MX-100CC coax ports are connected to the hotel coax TV network. The proper channels are selected remotely and the hotel staff completes the installation by adding the new channels to each TV’s channel map. From this point on the new channels are remotely managed using FlexDM. When a new video is ready it will be uploaded to FlexDM, transcoded by FlexDM, and distributed by FlexDM to each hotel’s MX-100CC for inclusion in the appropriate TV channel playlist. The video is not streamed. Rather it is delivered once as a file to each MX-100CC. As such, there is no impact on the hotel internet bandwidth demand. Viola, hotels get revenue, local attractions get additional patrons and a new scalable business is created!

West Pond provided the following technology and services for this solution:

• West Pond’s FlexStream MX-100CC Shelf Top Smart Headend System
• West Pond’s FlexDM remote management service is used to transcode video files, create channel playlists, and manage video playback for TV reception in one or more properties.