I thought it was time to add clarity to the situation hotels face when choosing new LCD televisions for their guest rooms.

Many managers take their leads or gain knowledge from retail advertising and their salesmen. From this they select a high definition digital television because that’s what looks good and works well at home.

The usual hotel purchasing process is to shop the quotes round to get the best price for the selected television from suppliers. Chances are they got a great deal on a couple hundred televisions based on the original criteria.

Once installed many of you will be very disappointed with the quality of the picture you see in the guest room.

What hotels don’t know despite hunting down a great price, they likely paid $40,000 more than they should have. Not a great deal for the owner.

Focus on price or favorite brand because it is good at home was the mistake made.

If your hotel has a movie system then you maybe surprised to know that it’s the movie system that has the Tuner. That little black box that makes the movie system work on the back of the television or cabinent is the tuner. 99% of these are Analog tuners.

So why pay for a high definition television?

The digital tuner in the television is not used at all – in fact the television just displays picture and sound all other functions are disabled.

It’s not much different than a computer monitor with sound.

The movie system providers may have upgraded the hotels headend system to digital,

 The picture in the guestroom will still only be the lower quality analog.

Plenty slick sales guys out there would rather sell a hotel the high definition units that’s how they make better commission. If you bought from a retailer most wouldn’t be aware of how movie systems operate.

In a couple of year hotels will need to consider should they invest in putting the new IPTV “internet protocol television” systems in.

This is another very tricky field but consider the American experience.

They gave guests choice of a hundred channels that had great content.

However these systems can only generate revenue for the hotel by having guests purchase a movie, the US experience found the guests could not find or there was so much competing content for them. End result movie revenue slumped, with hotels having to pick up the cost.

Hotels will need to do their homework very well and seek balanced advice in this field.

Greg