Imagine you are in charge of
marketing for a national hotel brand and you want to maximize the power of
the guest room television to reach travelers with relevant information and
promotions. Your objectives go far beyond placing your brand logo on the
screen; you want the flexibility to: Premiere an on-screen “look” that reflects your unique brand identity
across every property in your portfolio.—Run separate, time-sensitive
video promotions at your full service and limited service properties,
respectively.—Deploy and withdraw on-screen promotions “on the fly” to
fill open reservations at your restaurants, spas and golf courses.—
Promote family-oriented content for leisure travelers during specific days
and times.—Direct guests to the in-room checkout service to avoid front
desk congestion during the morning rush—and leverage that service
off-site with personalized receipts automatically sent to the e-mail
addresses your guests specify.—Promote a special offer exclusively for
guests on your club floor.—Offer a strong lineup of family-friendly
entertainment at your resort properties, while featuring a heavier mix of
business and meeting- oriented content at your urban properties.—In
short, maximize guest satisfaction for every guest, representing every
traveler type, in every room, every day.

It doesn’t take magic to do this—it takes LodgeNet Entertainment
Corporation and the industry’s most sophisticated content management
system. LodgeNet developed the Media Management System to support its
sigNETure TV(SM) marketing and entertainment system. sigNETure TV provides
hotels with a tailored guest user interface, co-created by LodgeNet and
the hotel customer to match the “look and feel” of the hotel’s overall
brand identity. It also serves as a robust marketing engine enabling the
hotel to reach guests with multiple, branded “touch points” at every stage
of their interactive TV experience. The system delivers television
programming and interactive content compatible with the entertainment,
information and productivity needs of each hotel’s particular guests.

“We built our new LodgeNet Media Management System from the ground up to
answer the unique demands of the business philosophy behind our sigNETure
Solutions,” says Dave Bankers, Senior Vice President Product & Technology
Development for LodgeNet. “We needed a system that could automate and
optimize how we acquire, configure, distribute and monitor content for the
hotels we serve. The complexity of delivering these diverse assets
required that we abandon off-the-shelf solutions and develop our own fully
integrated solution.”

The LodgeNet Media Management System performs four essential functions:—
It acquires an enormous array of individual content pieces, including
movies, games, music, music videos and short-form entertainment, along
with all of the hotel customer’s identity and marketing elements.—It
configures (or groups) these variable pieces for each individual property.
Scheduling and display information is configured in addition to the
acquired content and corresponding on-screen marketing elements.—It
distributes hotel-specific “bundles” of assets through the Internet and
LodgeNet’s satellite distribution network. “The control our hotel
customers have over their guest marketing is incredible,” explains Darla
Schultz, Vice President Marketing for LodgeNet. “We can send any
combination of assets to as many or as few hotels as desired. Because of
the differences among hotels, it’s very unlikely that any two hotels will
receive the same bundle of information.”—It reports back to LodgeNet to
confirm that each hotel has received all of its scheduled assets, and to
provide aggregate information about how guests are using the LodgeNet
system. “Having delivered in-room entertainment for almost 25 years, we
have historical segmentation data on what plays in certain types of
hotels, and what doesn’t,” says Schultz. “The LodgeNet Media Management
System gives us additional usage data, and it enables us to continually
fine-tune the mix of assets each property receives—down to time-of-day
and day-of-week scheduling variables. That, in turn, helps increase guest
satisfaction and drive higher in-room revenues for our hotel customers.”

“We can help each hotel stamp its unique identity on its interactive TV
network by targeting the branding, marketing, entertainment and services
that are best-suited to the interests of that hotel’s guests, on their
schedules,” concludes Schultz. “That makes sigNETure TV invaluable to a
hotelier’s integrated marketing plan.”

LodgeNet , one of the world’s largest providers of interactive television
systems and broadband services to the hospitality industry, is showcasing
its full range of TV and HSIA sigNETure Solutions at Booth 1512 of the
Dallas Convention Center, today through June 24. More information can be
found at http://www.lodgenet.com/ .
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