Hands On With Netflix and YouTube at Marriott Hotels

Hotel pay per view is dying. Hotels have understood this for a while; as far back as 2006, Marriott loaded "jack packs" into many of its rooms to let you pipe your laptop through the TV. Now, a range of hotels use smart TVs, set-top boxes, docks or Apple TVs to let you pipe video from your laptop or smartphone into your TV.

Marriott's taking a different approach. Using set-back boxes from LG and Enseo, hooked up to LG TVs, the chain lets you log into Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, YouTube, or Pandora right on your hotel room TV. I checked one out at the New York Marriott East Side, where every room is now equipped with the streaming boxes.

Netflix in Every Room
Turning on Netflix in your Marriott room isn't like surfing the Web; it's like hotel video on demand. That has its pluses and minuses. You're stuck with one of those big, clunky (easy to clean, worthless if stolen) hotel remotes, and there's no way to control the service from your smartphone. Marriott's director of guest technology, Scott Hansen, said they're working on that.

"Using a remote control is not as user-friendly as a screen or a tablet," he said.

Go to the TV's main menu and pick the streaming services option, and you get a choice between Netflix, YouTube, Pandora, Hulu Plus, and Crackle. Netflix, Pandora, and Hulu require you to log in or set up an account on the spot; the other two let you browse and play without logging in, although you can log in if you choose. Once you've logged in once, your credentials are stored until you check out of the hotel, or until you click a "Clear Credentials" button on the TV menu.

The app implementations are pretty complete: Netflix has multiple users, Pandora has all of your channels, and YouTube has your playlists. Videos resolved well into 720p HD on the older LG TV I was watching. 

There were a few bugs. Netflix didn't have my complete "Continue Watching" list, although if I went down to a particular show I'd watched at home by browsing or searching, my progress was saved. Crackle also didn't load at all, although that problem seemed to be on Crackle's end.

Kicking back on the bed and watching shows I actually wanted to watch felt a lot more enjoyable than flipping through linear channels, or balancing my laptop on my knees. 

How It Works
Enseo and LG have the technical keys to the Netflix/Marriott relationship. Using set-back boxes means Marriott doesn't need to upgrade all of its TVs at once, which is key for older properties. The Marriott East Side, for instance, by and large uses 32-inch LG 32LX4DC TVs, which are 7-year-old, 720p HD model. Set-back boxes can do IP over existing coax cables, meaning older hotels don't need to mess with additional coax-to-Ethernet solutions.

The setback boxes also connect to the hotel's property management system, automatically resetting when a guest checks out. They're not wired up to do guest services interactively, but can stream static pages like in-room dining menus, saving the hotel the cost of printing and distributing all of that collateral material you typically find in your room. Marriott's not doing that yet, but it's working on it.

Marriott is phasing out its jack packs, but it may have wireless ways to stream content to its TVs by the end of the year, Hansen said. The Enseo set-top boxes include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections; streaming music via Bluetooth to TVs is already possible (although Marriott doesn't generally take advantage of it), and the company is looking into wireless video streaming from mobile devices, said Enseo's EVP of managed services, David Simpson.

Netflix requests are routed through a server in the hotel, but go out to the world on the same main Internet connection that the rooms are on. Putting Netflix in a set-back box lets the hotel manage streaming traffic, though, to make sure the streams come through clearly even during congested times.

The video boxes haven't dramatically affected bandwidth, Hansen said, because many of the TV video streams are replacing streams that would have been viewed on laptops or tablets. At most, Marriott has seen a 20 percent increase in maximum Internet use at peak times, around 8 p.m. at night.

"It's a shift from viewing on the tablet to the TV, versus doubling up," he said. "We see no degradation [in hotel-wide service.]"

Although Marriott now offers free Internet to people booking through its own website and using a Marriott Rewards number, the TV-based streaming video is free to everyone, Rewards or no. And if that means losing the occasional paid Wi-Fi signup, so be it.

"This is how users are experiencing TV content today. We don't charge for NBC and HBO, and we feel it's a natural progression," Hansen said.

This Is The Future
It's a major advantage, and something that you're likely to see in more hotels in the future. Marriott is expanding streaming to 100 hotels by the end of 2015, and to all of its 300 U.S. hotels by the end of 2016. International expansion is trickier, as every country has its own legal framework around streaming, and Marriott spokesman John Wolf said the company's agreement with Netflix only covers the U.S. "at this point."

Enseo's Simpson said Marriott "does not have an exclusive," and that the company will "definitely be rolling [streaming] out to other brands with Netflix." No other hotel brands have yet announced the service, though, so Marriott is clearly in the lead here.