With so much screen time being spent in front of so many other devices, the old goggle box has become rather neglected. You can catch up on the news anytime, anywhere on any device and movies and TV series, well, you can download them whenever you like. 

When I am on a business trip, I may probably switch it on in the morning to watch the news and perhaps again in the evening, while getting ready for dinner. Sometimes it’s just the ambient noise we road warriors need to make us feel less alone, although I find that music is a better substitute.

I’ve been told that the average business traveler spends maybe 40 minutes a day watching television in the room and if pay movies are offered, then adult movies form the bulk of purchase. 

Given all these, what’s the future of the television in hotel rooms? 

Well, one company that’s just set up in Asia hopes it has the answer to making the television sexy again in hotel rooms and in so doing, shape the future of television on the road.

at-visions Asia was set up last October by Oliver Winzer, formerly the regional director IT of Amadeus Asia and MD of Optims Asia. It’s a subsidiary of the Austrian company that has successfully sold its IPTV service to between 60 and 70 hotels in Europe and Africa, namely groups such as Hyatt and Kempinski. 

Its regional head office is in Singapore (picture shows Winzer and his team in the showroom) and at-visions has also opened an office in Sydney and is planning one more in Hong Kong as it sets out to expand its ONEvisionTM Hotel TV business in the Asia/Pacific region.

One of the first things Winzer has done is set up a showroom at the German Centre. Giving me a demonstration of the product, Winzer says at-visions brings a different approach to television by making it the one source of relevant content that customers can interact with. 

“The television is turning into a device that connects the traditional TV set, Internet and other devices,” he said. And so you can watch TV, listen to music on web radio and a music library, order room service, book a tour or restaurant, surf the web, play games, use Skype, do your social media and, if interfaced with a GDS, book flights and car rental.
at-visions allows the hotel to customize the television channels according to customer preferences – whether they are on business or on leisure. 

One area at-visions is not pushing too hard on is pay movies. “Four percent of guests watch movies on demand and 80% of those are adult movies,” said Winzer. “We think that’s not a business some hotels want to be associated with anyway.”

Not so in Cambodia, however, where he said hotels earn substantial revenues from adult movies. “We want to differentiate our offering but we will offer movies on demand if the hotels want it,” he said. 

What was impressive was the music library – you can listen to almost 30,000 radio stations (so you can listen to your home radio station when abroad if you wish) and there’s a music library where you can share music with others. Of course, hotels would have to buy a licence for this sharing service but it’s a cool idea – sharing music on the road.
You can also control the television set with your iPad and Android devices, so imagine you are sitting in the hotel café and you are able to access the television content. “You can watch the television whenever,” said Winzer. I thought it quite nifty, using my iPad as a giant remote control. 

However to watch TV anywhere implies you would need free, high-speed wifi access everywhere throughout the hotel and we know that’s quite a way from happening in most hotels.

Using the Linux open system, at-visions also encourages companies to develop third party apps to add to its TV content. 

Basically, it’s a solution that allows hotels to load as much or as little into it as they want. “What you put into it really depends on how much the hotel wants to offer and how educated the customer is. You don’t want to over-complicate it because you could confuse some customers,” said Winzer. “The best thing is to simplify it and have the option to enhance it later on.

“What we are doing is preparing hotels for the next generation television and media experience, which allows them to interact with guests.”

With this captive and hopefully engaged audience, hotels can use the television as a sales and marketing channel to upsell and promote products and services and it could also help remove bottlenecks at areas such as the concierge by making it possible for customers to directly find information about tours and restaurants. 

Asked how much it would cost a hotel to install the service, Winzer said the budget would depend on how much or how little the hotel wanted. Response has been good so far and he is hoping to cover 5,000 TV sets by the end of this year, with the first customer set to beThe Empire Hotel & Country Club in Brunei.

The next thing in IPTV? OTT (Over the top) streaming – the delivery of video and audio media streams to connected devices via the Internet. Unlike traditional IPTV, there is no need for a dedicated network or infrastructure provided by the operator, as OTT is transported through regular Internet data protocols and uses the open Internet, on unmanaged networks. 

To bring OTT to Asia, at-visions has signed an exclusive partnership with French company Anevia, which provides video solutions and service infrastructure for the delivery of Live TV and video-on-demand (VoD) services to TVs, PCs, Internet-connected devices and mobile phones.