Large, corporate travel oriented hotels have long used message boards and digital signs to post meeting notices. Now, economy and midsize hotels are following suit and adding a few innovations of their own. They represent a bountiful local market for digital signage resellers.

Many of the biggest economy and midsize hotel brands are actually franchises. The hotel chains, such as Wyndham Hotel Group, Choice Hotels International and Hilton, each with a number of sub-brands, provide national marketing, reservations support, and many operational services. Yet, local owners have quite a bit of flexibility to operate within the brand and ultimately, of course, they are responsible for their own profitability.

Let me give you an example of an innovative use of digital signage at a mid-size leisure-oriented hotel.

Clarion Resort & WaterPark
Triangle Management & Investment Inc. operates four hotels in Florida. The corporation wanted to implement a digital signage system that was inexpensive, flexible, would work with its existing in-house cable systems, and could be remotely managed. We provided the digital signage software system at the company's Clarion Resort and WaterPark in Orlando. It is used in public areas and drives the in-room information channel.

Benny Fresco, Triangle Management Director of Technology, researched the digital signage system for their Clarion Resort & WaterPark. A single digital signage feed serves fifteen 42-inch plasmas in the hotel, as well as televisions in almost 200 guest rooms -- all delivered over the facility's house cable on Channel 45. The signage promotes the WaterPark, restaurants and events, and is supported by background music and the hotel's jingle.

The results have been great. "People are now aware of our restaurants and that we have specials. I've also seen an increase in breakfast. Our restaurant revenue has grown at least 10 to 15 percent since we've been using the sign," said Fresco.

The digital signage is integrated into the meetings/events sales process, as well. When an event is scheduled, the sales administrator sends out the contract, reserves the room and posts the event to the digital signage system using a scheduling feature that holds the page until the event is near. The digital signage system automatically adds the page to the display rotation before the event and removes it when the event has passed.

Triangle has also added digital signage at its Fort Lauderdale property. It uses the same house cable setup, but in this case the signage displays shuttle schedules for cruise ships and airport drop-offs since the hotel handles a lot of cruise/airport customers. That way, guests can spend their time (and money) in the restaurants as they wait for their shuttles.

Technical Considerations
In addition to feeding the information channel on the in-house cable systems, Triangle Management wanted to economically and remotely manage digital signs at its four Fort Lauderdale and Orlando properties from its Hollywood office.

"I wanted to find an easy solution that would be cost-effective to display meeting notices, advertise the hotel, display the weather and time, and have news feeds that I could manage remotely," Fresco says. The digital signage pages are jointly managed by corporate out of Hollywood and the local hotel administrators. Fresco "can see what's going to be on the screen in Orlando from our offices in Hollywood."

The VAR Takeaway
This is a big market opportunity for resellers with the potential for large installations and lucrative hardware sales. The decisions are generally made locally. As with Triangle, management companies often own more than one property, increasing the sales potential and the benefits of a centrally managed digital signage system.

When using a SaaS distribution model, you don't have to worry about day-to-day support. Finally, it's a great entree to new accounts with a technology that has a direct payback and may not yet be offered by your competition.

 

Mike Strand is founder and CEO of StrandVision LLC (http://www.strandvision.com), an Internet-based subscription digital signage service that is distributed through resellers. Previously, Mike founded StrandWare, a barcode software and AIDC company. Mike can be reached at mjstrand@strandvision.com.