Most hotel TVs are bad. We all know this. I was just on a trip across Washington state, and most of the hotel’s TV options were the cable channels built into the television. Most weren’t smart TVs, and even if they were, you couldn’t use the features.
That’s been a problem for, well, forever. The idea that you’d walk into a hotel room and throw something on the television from your personal streaming setup — and that not be a mind-bending process that requires a dongle or using a remote to type your username and password in one character at a time — is a dream we’ve all been waiting for. It seems that LG agrees and is taking a shot at it.
Today, LG announced that it is bringing Google Cast to its compatible televisions in Hyatt hotel locations. Michael Kosla, senior vice president of LG Business Solutions USA, said “LG is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in hotel room entertainment through partnerships with technology leaders like Google to combine our new smart hotel TVs with the latest in casting technology to benefit hoteliers and guests alike.”
Rohan Jani, associate vice president of guest products at Hyatt, said, “Aligned with our purpose of care and goal to make the guest experience even more seamless, Hyatt is proud to work towards building on our role as the leader in hotel room casting. We introduced the first industry casting solution in 2017, and now with Google and LG, we are exploring taking in-room casting to the next level to boost operational efficiency and improve the guest experience.”
But will it actually be easy…and good?
I’ve personally used casting in a hotel room before, and the experience was…inconsistent. We tried to cast a new episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi (when that was new) from my iPhone through the Disney+ app. I don’t know if it was Google’s fault or the hotel’s Wi-Fi, but the quality was bad, and it kept freezing on us.
Of course, that could have been due to it not being as integrated as LG, Google, and Hyatt are talking about this new venture being. The company says that, with this new integration, you’ll be able to simply scan a QR code on the TV to get set up. That’s certainly better than the multi-step process I had to go through when trying to make this happen.
Using a simple QR code on the TV, guests will be able to quickly establish a cast connection and
begin wirelessly streaming videos, music and more from their devices. In addition to mobile
device controls, the TV remote can also be used for typical play, track and volume controls,
ensuring a simple and familiar user experience. Then, when guests checkout, devices will
automatically be reset.
This sounds great, and I hope the company actually lands the plane here. With so many hotels’ Wi-Fi speeds still being atrocious, I’m still skeptical here. However, with three big players coming together on this, I’m hoping that we might finally get a good experience.
We need someone else to step in here anyway, especially since Apple’s play to get AirPlay into hotels is turning into a very slow process. The company announced this back in 2023 and I have yet to end up in a compatible hotel. That partnership was with IHG, however, so it looks like we may have some rivalry starting here. Good! Hooray, competition.