We Want Our Entertainment Everywhere

It wasn’t that long ago that stuttering, buffering video was the standard streaming experience. Some of us powered through because we really wanted to watch that entertaining football or boxing match, but it wasn’t a mainstream activity. Fast forward just a few years, and streaming has now become the norm. A significantly improved user experience is certainly a factor in this explosive growth, and it has set an expectation for broadcast quality video entertainment to be more the rule than the exception.

And as streaming video becomes more mobile, moving from computers to smartphones and tablets, this expectation for a high-quality experience extends to everywhere we go—including hotels, planes and even trains. But what happens when our options for entertainment on the go are curtailed by limited bandwidth, bad Wi-Fi, or no Wi-Fi at all (gasp!)?

High Expectations for Streaming Entertainment on the Go

Hospitality is big business. In the US alone, nearly 1.3 billion annual guest nights generated over $270 billion in sales for the hotel and lodging industry in 2018. In order to grab their share of that business, individual hotels and chains must pay attention to which service offerings are most critical when potential guests are making decisions about where to stay.

Access to streaming entertainment is clearly important once you reach your destination. However, these days travelers aren’t willing to wait until they get to the end of their journey. The importance of accessing compelling content in offline situations is big business, with monthly in-flight entertainment revenues forecast to rise by 30% on average per aircraft from 2017 to 2022.

Streaming entertainment on the go isn’t just for business travelers and vacationers—it’s become an everyday practice as commuters have come to expect an entertainment everywhere experience on their daily journey too. According to a New York Times survey, 30% of Americans view TV and movies while commuting; and with commute times on the rise, there will be more and more opportunity for offline streaming while on the move, whether on trains, subways or riding the bus.

As Millennials continue to mature and the digital-first Gen Z comes of age, the expectation for easy access to a quality user experience anywhere—including during the daily commute in moments where reliable internet connectivity simply isn’t possible.

Quality on the Go—Streaming Breeds Loyalty

Clearly streaming entertainment on the go is in high demand, and consumers are willing to give their loyalty to businesses that give them what they want.

For hoteliers, the requirement is critical, with as guests specifically seek out quality video entertainment. The delivery of one bad streaming experience could damage consumers’ impression of a brand and put future loyalty at risk.

So what can hospitality and transportation businesses do to keep their guests and passengers happy and loyal as they travel and stay away from home and face poor bandwidth or no internet situations?

Entertainment Everywhere: From Transportation to Hospitality

Intertrust offers a secure platform that enables content service providers to publish and deliver protected content via high-quality local Wi-Fi video streaming. This patented platform provides complete end-to-end content delivery and streaming that is suitable wherever access to the internet is limited or even when it’s unavailable. Kiora is easy to deploy and meets requirements for transportation and hospitality entertainment applications, either with localized, low-cost hardware or through a virtualized deployment.

Kiora’s secure streaming and offline playback to mobile devices is well-suited for in-vehicle entertainment—such as buses, planes, and trains—where internet access is often limited or non-existent. It is also a lower-cost alternative to expensive broadband infrastructure and is ideal for hospitality environments, where it can create content hotspots or Wi-Fi zones for hotels, hospitals, army bases, oil platforms and more without depending on regular internet access.

Approved by all major studios to securely stream content, Kiora provides access to hundreds of hours of premium content, including movies and TV series. Through Intertrust’s partnership with Filmbankmedia, Kiora offers premium content from all the major Hollywood studios and offers dubbed and subtitled versions for many geographies.

Learn more about Kiora and how to meet growing consumer expectations for streaming entertainment on the go, or for immediate assistance, contact [email protected].