Hometown TV In The Home Away From Home

Guests at leading hotels around the country may soon be able to tune in to their hometown TV news as they unpack their bags.

WorldNow, best known for supplying TV stations with online and mobile publishing and video support, has teamed with LodgeNet Interactive, a supplier of in-room entertainment, to develop just such a service.

The service, known simply as Hometown News, is being tested at the Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing in all 350 of its rooms.

Along with the movies and cable networks that form the core of the LodgeNet service, the Hyatt guests can click to news from stations in 47 of the top 50 markets.

“The majority of the content is local news stories and weather stories,” says Doug Campbell, the SVP at WorldNow who is leading the effort.

“However, we will publish anything a station provides,” he says. “Anything of local interest can flow through the system. The content decisions entirely rest with the station.”

WorldNow CEO Gary Gannaway says he has been working on the service for six years. “Basically, the idea is to allow travelers to put their laptops aside and use the high-def TV that’s 42 inches to stay in touch with home through the local news,” he says.

WorldNow and LodgeNet say they are pleased with the results from the Philadelphia trial, now in its sixth month, and are preparing to move forward with a commercial offering.

“From what we can tell, the news content usage is actually very high relative to the other content,” Campbell says.

What’s surprising, he says, is that the guests are not only checking out their hometown news, but the local Philadelphia news as well.

Based on the positive results, says David Goldstone, VP, sales and hotel relations, LodgeNet, “we are confident of this product’s future success as we now plan a more extensive rollout” in 2011.

Goldstone declined to detail the rollout plans, citing competitive reasons and the need as a publicly traded company not to release material information prematurely.

Goldstone says that WorldNow’s technical expertise and customer service are a “perfect fit” with LodgeNet. “We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship.”

LodgeNet provides services to approximately 1.9 million hotel rooms through most of the leading hotel chains. Translate the rooms to homes, and LodgeNet would be a top 10 cable operator.

The company is based in Sioux Falls, S.D., with offices in Denver and Atlanta.

With the service, WorldNow is leveraging the relationships it has made with the many TV stations that use its online and mobile platforms.

WorldNow’s roster of TV station group clients includes Allbritton, CBS, Cox, Dispatch, Fisher, Gray, Griffin, Journal, Landmark, Quincy, Raycom, Titan, Waterman, Hoak, Block, McKinnon, London and Young.

According to Campbell, WorldNow developed a means of funneling via the Internet the news that its client-stations are putting on to their websites into the LodgeNet servers where it can be distributed to client hotels and ultimately to their guests.

Campbell says the service represents a new revenue stream for stations.

It’s up to LodgeNet and its hotel-clients to decide how they want to market the service to guests. It could be offered as a free service or as a pay option as movies are.

Whatever the decision, it will apply uniformly to all hotels, says LodgeNet’s Goldstone. “Guests stay at different hotels,” he says. “They expect the same service everywhere.”

In any event, says Campbell, broadcasters will be paid for their content, making Hometown News a new revenue stream for them.

In connection with Hometown News, WorldNow has developed another technology designed to encourage usage of the service, but which may have other applications for LodgeNet and its hotel clients. It’s a smartphone and tablet app that consumers can download upon checking in. It will allow them to control the TV like a conventional remote and to take advantage of other hotel services.

From inside or outside the hotel, guests could use their smartphones to order meals from room service, make restaurant reservations, review their bills, ask the concierge for help or contact other hotel services.

Yet to be worked out is exactly how guests would be download the app, Campbell says. One idea is to put a bar code on the key card that the guest can pick up with the smartphone camera, he says. LodgeNet seems to prefer putting the bar code on the TV screen.

Goldstone says that LodgeNet is “very much” interested in the app, but is not yet fully committed to deploying it.

The app opens up a lot of possibility for broadcasters and LodgeNet, says Gannaway. “It give you the ability to watch TV the way you want to in a world that’s about to get supercharged by Google TV.”