ZeeVee Provides Hotel Guests with In-room Preview of Hawaii’s Sights and Sounds
Guests at high-end hotels are likely familiar with branded in-room TV channels dedicated to showing hotel amenities as well as nearby sights and attractions. If you happen to be staying at the 635-room Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort in Honolulu, the content is being brought to you by NMG Network, a creator of custom media experiences for luxury and leisure travel, hospitality and premium residential partners. In fact, its Emmy Award-winning videos can be seen at 85% of the state’s hotels.
Francine Beppu, VP, integrated marketing, NMG Network describes the company’s approach to the hotel market this way, “We are creative storytellers and are passionate about creating content that authentically informs, inspires and entertains; we craft key messaging and narratives into stunning, captivating and original video content.”
The company has an interesting business model to serve this market. It not only creates rich entertainment and cultural content but plays a major role in creating the AV infrastructure that delivers it to each room of its hotel partners. For this, the company focuses on meeting the need for a simple and cost-effective solution to get the programming in front of guests so that they will have the best in-room viewing experience.
Challenge
The mandate from Outrigger’s global brand team was two-fold – establish a way to provide guests with content that enables them to discover more about Hawaii’s culture, art music and activities – as well as seamlessly manage in-room TV programming.
As it does with all of its many hotel partners, the NMG team worked closely with several departments (IT, engineering, guest room entertainment vendors, etc.) to take a deep dive into understanding the Outrigger property’s operational processes from end-to-end. Armed with this knowledge and support, they set about finding a future-proof and scalable solution that allowed programming to be accessed and uploaded in real time while freeing up the hotel team from these time-consuming operational tasks.
Solution
The company installed the ZeeVee ZvPro820i modulator/encoder at the property, in conjunction with BrightSign media players, LG and Samsung monitors and a head-end/ guest room entertainment platform, to deliver guest channel content. The modulator enabled NMG to program up to two channels, with either being able to be used for preprogrammed content or livestream events.
“The ZvPro820i is easy to set up and ZeeVee provides excellent response time and support,” said Beppu. “Once the equipment is connected and online, we're able to update programming and remotely manage the content feed in real time through a cloud-based platform.”
Brent Shiratori, VP, global brand group, Outrigger Hospitality Group. “In addition to being best-in-class on the technical side, NMG is masterful at visual storytelling. Being able to share an authentic sense of place for the destination provides both education and entertainment for our visitors—ultimately helping to cultivate a more meaningful guest experience.”
Key Takeaways:
The ZvPro820i:
- Offers the ability to program up to two channels to distribute preprogrammed or live content
- Connects to the Internet to enable remote programming updates and content management in real time
- Is easy to set up
ZeeVee:
- Customer support responds quickly
Key System Components
- ZeeVee ZvPro820i modulator/encoder
- BrightSign media players
- LG monitors
- Samsung monitors
"The ZvPro820i is easy to set up and ZeeVee provides excellent response time and support. Once the equipment is connected and online, we're able to update programming and remotely manage the content feed in real timey through a cloud-based platform.”
Francine Beppu – VP Integrated Marketing, NMG Network