All good families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Anna Karenina)
So here you are. Your TVs are aging. You don’t want your guests to feel like they have stepped back in the previous millennium when they walk into your hotel room. You’re feeling really sorry for yourself; damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
Yes, you are in a tough spot. The pressure to do something is enormous. Here is a list of ways you can almost guarantee that you will be unhappy. The list will not be exhaustive, and I will add to it over time as I hear more stories of the bad things that happen to good people.
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- You blindly sign any deal that gives you new equipment with no up front capital expenditure. You rationalize it by saying, “Seven years isn’t really that long.”
- You sign a deal with a vendor who will give you hardware for free based on their “advertising” model. Seems to good too be true. You say, “So what if they go bankrupt, it won’t be my problem.” They go bankrupt. It’s now your problem.
- Your in-room technology solution has cool touch panels. Yes, touch panels were cool last month.
- You close your eyes and pretend that iPad/iPhone-like devices with high-intensity projectors won’t be available in the next two to three years and that people will really want to watch the warmed over proprietary content that will be displayed on your flat-screen televisions. You say “flat-screen television” a few times and you get a queasy feeling that you sound like your father saying Victrola when you showed him your new stereo system in the eighties.
