Results from the newly completed IMS Research study IPTV: A Global Market Analysis – 2011 Edition, indicate that the worldwide Hospitality market for IPTV set-top boxes will reach a revenue milestone of three quarters of a billion US dollars in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 16%. The market is forecast to encounter double digit year-on-year revenue growth rates as hoteliers adopt IPTV technology as their entertainment platform. Currently, IP set-top box revenues for the Hospitality market hover near $400 million.

John Kendall, IMS Research Market Analyst and author of the study states, “Internet Protocol technology is a natural fit for the Hospitality market. Consumers prize the choices IP platforms can deliver, and the opportunities that the platform offers to the hotelier have great value.”

Kendall goes on to recount his hotel experience in London for IP&TV World Forum in March. “I stayed in two separate comparitively priced hotels for my duration in London. In one hotel, my TV option was a free-to-air CRT television. The reception was slightly fuzzy, and was naturally in Standard Definition. My last two nights of the week, I spent in a smaller room equipped with an IPTV system – flat panel HDTV, VOD options, and a crystal clear picture. I could order room service and a wake-up call off the TV screen. When I next need a hotel in London, which do you think I’ll pick?”

IP technology not only offers choice and convenience to the consumer, it gives hoteliers expansive opportunities to increase brand identification and loyalty by offering a consistent hotel experience from site to site. The platform also allows hoteliers the option to integrate IP solutions normally accessed by telephone or computer on the TV, whether that be ordering room service, ordering broadband access, or scheduling a wake-up call. Environmental controls can also be incorporated as a solution. Even further, access to apps, local news, weather or traffic widgets, local flight information, etc., are all value-adds that IP offers and consumers have increasingly come to expect.

“I have stated in the past that IP offers tremendous scalability on the VOD front for hoteliers,” Kendall continues. “While common knowledge seems to indicate that VOD revenues are plateauing or even, in some cases, declining, in the Hospitality market, IP technology and the ease it offers on the consumer experience side indicates to me that hoteliers incorporating IP platforms can still have a viable business model for VOD.”