Nomadix solutions are built for the enterprise, to stand up to large-scale hospitality use. Nomadix Casting is no different. So what’s the benefit of using our B2B casting solution over the many B2C devices on the market like Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV Stick? Simple, it’s built for hotels.
With almost 110 million connected TV devices sold globally in Q4 2020 alone, your guests are likely used to watching what they want, when they want. But unlike in the home environment, guests can change each night, systems need to be reset and details cleared for security and privacy. Any faults or misuse may need to be managed across thousands of rooms to keep quality high, and content must always be cast to the correct in-room TV.
Why aren’t hotels built for consumer devices and vice versa?
Though guests may use these devices at home, using these consumer dongles or sticks in a hotel isn’t as intuitive as you might think. Here are some of the pain points that guests and hoteliers might face:
Network topology & security: Consumer products are built for the home where all devices are shared between everyone in the house. For security and privacy reasons, you don’t want that in a hotel where there are many guests changing rooms each day. Only chosen devices should be able to discover and control the guests’ own in-room TVs. Imagine the upset if another guest started streaming a movie in the wrong room in the middle of the night..
Onboarding: Casting using consumer devices is not intuitive. Guests must be aware that casting is available, pair their device and double-check that it’s paired with their own room’s TV rather than the one next door.
Troubleshooting: There is no way to know whether a device in a particular room is properly connected and working because there is no reporting system in place.
Unpairing: There is also no way to check if a device is unpaired when guests check out. And if not unpaired, there is the risk of the next guest seeing previously streamed content.
Analytics and updates: Hoteliers have no access to analytics and must make sure that the consumer streaming devices are regularly upgraded to the latest software.
Bandwidth management: The hotel will need to ensure there is enough bandwidth available for each device to provide a good streaming user experience.
Theft protection: Hoteliers will need to get creative to prevent guests from simply taking the streaming device on their way out.
Why choose Nomadix Casting in hotels
Nomadix Casting uses Chromecast technology; however, our casting solution is further built-out and cloud-based to ensure privacy and security, ease of use for guests and simple management for staff.
Network topology & security: Nomadix Casting is fully secure. Each individual device is on a separate hidden network all taken care of by the proxy server, and guests can only connect to their own in-room TV.
Onboarding: Guests see the casting onboarding screen with instructions in their preferred language when available, as soon as they turn on their TV. When a property uses a Nomadix high-speed internet access (HSIA) solution with Nomadix Casting, pairing to the device is seamless. For other properties, guests can connect in three seconds by scanning a QR code.
The casting onboarding screen is a fully customizable cloud page, which can suit any hotel brand design and colors. Nomadix Casting supports onboarding screens with intuitive drag-and-drop functionality to fit any style and layout. The Room Groups function allows hoteliers to create a dedicated onboarding screen only for their guests from MICE groups. This screen can be customized to the group’s needs.
Troubleshooting: The cloud console provides the hotelier with full, real-time visibility of all streaming devices on their network. If one goes offline, it will be shown in the Room Status report. If the number of offline devices reaches the predefined threshold, alerts will be triggered.
Unpairing: Guests’ devices are unpaired automatically with a PMS integration, or an unpair timer can be set.
Analytics and updates: Hoteliers have full dashboard visibility of guest rooms using casting, applications used, connected devices and more. Various user roles are available for hoteliers to assign appropriate privileges to their staff members. All updates for the casting devices are taken care of by the proxy server since it administers the Chromecast booting.
Bandwidth management: The Nomadix solution ensures that each streaming device has the appropriate bandwidth for guests to view what they want, when they want.
Theft protection: Nomadix provides a theft-protected security case and cable. Security cases also protect the Chromecast from guest abuse such as reset or reboot.
By catering our solution specifically to hotels, we are able to address each of the pain points caused by simply adding our hotel-built solution to your in-room TVs.
Learn more about Nomadix Casting. Contact our sales team here.
Andrei Motoc is our senior international channel sales manager. Over almost seven years with Nomadix, he has supported our MDU & hospitality customers both in technical management & partner sales roles.