No, it's not practically possible, since the TV systems in hotels are typically outsourced to providors of hotel TV services which are not brand or chain specific. Ie, a Hampton and a Fairfield and Holiday Inn Express and a Courtyard and a Hilton Garden Inn and a Sheraton and a Comfort Inn and a Wyndham and a Best Western and a Radisson in the same airport area may all use the same TV service providor, while it may be a different TV service providor downtown (away from the airport).

Also, some hotels get their channels from Direct TV, some from Dish, some from the local cable company (Time Warner Cable or Comcast or whoever it is locally), and the lineups are different on each.

Finally, and most obviously, hotels want to carry local channels, and there are different number of local channels in different cities. In the Los Angeles area, for example, there's CBS 2, NBC 4, CW 5, ABC 7, indie at 9, Fox 11, "My" at 13, non-PBS public at 28, PAX (or whatever they're called this week) at 30 I think, PBS at 50, alternative/educational PBS at 58, and that's not counting zillions of Spanish language, religious, and international stations.

If a hotel uses a local cable company, they'll like get all of those, and the channel lineup will be that of the local cable company.

If a hotel uses something else, they'll only get a subset of those, but the number of local channels needed is still likely to be different in different cities. (As another example: A Baltimore downtown hotel may only need Baltimore channels, a Washington DC downtown hotel may only need DC channels, but a hotel midway between the two around Columbia is likely to need both.)

Oh, and now that you know that some hotels use Dish and use Direct TV and some use local cable systems, what about channels that one of those doesn't carry but the other does? Dish blacked out AMC some time back, has it returned AMC to the lineup or no? But Direct TV has AMC and so does the average local cable system.


... Having said that: What would nice as a minimum is to have an accurate guide accessible in every room. I've been in way to many hotels where there either is no guide (either physical or on the TV), or the guide is very wrong (whether physical or on the TV).

If hotels can't even bother with this, then the next step (making an app which detects which hotel you're in and tell you which of your favorite stations is on which channel number at that hotel) is not going to possible.

So how about the next thing? An app something like Shazzam which flips through the channels and figures out by listening which station is on each channel? @:-)