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Hotel Visitors Watch More Commercials

Nov 19, 2008  •  Post A Comment

If you want people to watch TV commercials, maybe you ought to put them up in a hotel room.
A recent study found that 28.3% of business travelers and 23.9% of leisure travelers watch more TV commercials while on trips than they do at home, where almost half of them tend to fast-forward through advertising messages.
Of course, the survey was commissioned by the Hotel Networks, a division of LodgeNet, which sells cable service and on-demand programming to hotels.
“It was our objective to discover the characteristics, preferences and behaviors of hotel guests when it comes to programming and advertising in that environment,” said Derek White, president of the Hotel Networks. “This study found some very encouraging results for advertisers and further validates what our own set-top box data has been telling us for years: The hotel room is a highly effective out-of-home advertising platform by every conceivable measurement.”
Out of their hotel rooms and back at home, 64.7% of both business and leisure respondents use their DVR at home to fast-forward through commercials. Of those who fast-forward, 85.3% of the business respondents and 86.1% of leisure respondents said they fast-forward through most or all commercials.
The survey found some interesting things about the way guests use the TV when in a hotel room.
For example, 53% of business travelers and 67.1% of leisure respondents say they multitask more while watching TV at home than in a hotel.
Away from home, people seem to be a bit more adventurous in their TV choices, with 25.9% of business and 25.0% of leisure respondents saying they watched a TV program they had never seen before in a hotel room and later began watching that program at home. Similarly, 20.3% of business and 17.5% of leisure respondents watched a TV channel they had never seen before in a hotel room and later began watching that channel at home.
Not surprisingly, 44.2% of business and 48.6% of leisure respondents said they would be interested in watching a free sneak preview of a new TV show on-demand in their hotel room.
“These findings clearly indicate the advantages for both advertisers and programmers in the hotel room environment, which is less cluttered and creates a more engaged consumer,” said Mr. White. “In addition to being a superior advertising space, the hotel room is ideal for generating new-program sampling and it is evident that this trial creates high levels of conversion, both to new cable channels and to new shows.”
What else is interesting to travelers? Would you believe news and weather?
According to the survey, 70.7% of respondents put news in their top five choices for hotel programming. Weather was in the top five among 46.8% of respondents. Business travelers were especially strong in the demand for newscasts, news Web sites and newsmagazines.
The online study was conducted in August by Zoomerang, and looked at the receptiveness of guests to different forms of in-room advertising. The survey focused on affluent business travelers who had taken at least one business trip in the past 12 months and stayed in upscale hotel chains and affluent leisure travelers who most often stayed in luxury accommodations.

5 Comments

  1. What a silly survey. Of *course* people watch commercials in a hotel room. They don’t have FF’able DVRs in their rooms.
    Though, why the cable guys haven’t managed to get into the hotel chains with the DVR boxes yet, is beyond me. I’d give anything to be able to pre-order a playlist of stuff to watch when I check in late at night.
    Oh, and of *course* businesspeople multitask more when they’re in a hotel room away from home. There’s no one else in the room to distract them, so they keep the tv on for company. Silly, silly, silly survey.

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