Clayton Morris said:
It’s easier to unpack your bags, climb into bed, access your Netflix que on your personal device than it is to waste the time fishing through some crappy hotel video menu.
in response to this from the NYTimes:
Largely because of the broad use of iPads and other mobile tablets, which are heavy users of video streaming, the guest room Wi-Fi networks that most hotels thought they had brought up to standard just a few years ago are now often groaning under user demands.
According to iBAHN, iPads consume four times more Wi-Fi data per month than the average smartphone.
(I’m not even going to comment on the stupidity of the comparison with smartphones which, for the most part, have their own 3G antenna and data services.)
If you add up how much hotels are paying for their “in house” entertainment systems, I reckon they could afford to bolster their WiFi systems at the cost of their nickel-and-dime video delivery systems. One of the hotels I was in last summer, the first thing I did was whip out the aerials and fire in the jacks which allowed me to mirror my iPad onto the TV screen to allow the kids to watch Ben 10 rather than French situational comedies.
And it’s not as if this is a surprise. Surely the hoteliers must have seen this coming as the rise of the mobile phone left their in-room phone systems idle (other than for room service and complaining about the lack of hot water). Surely they must run some sort of analytics on the on-demand services their rooms provide? Surely they have known for the last five years that all-you-can-eat data services are the norm and their pay per view services are redundant?
I honestly can’t remember the last time I used a hotel phone or their on-demand services. It’s certainly more than 10 years.