I often stay at Marriott properties in mainland Europe. After a long day in the field I enjoy getting back to the hotel and catching up with the news and then watching some non-news programme before retiring for the night.

Usually in the European hotels the only English language channels available are BBC World, CNN and CNBC. Would it be possible to persuade the hotels to subscibe to a channel such as BBC Prime or any other English language entertainment channel?

I realise that pay tv chanels showing films are offered but I don't usually have the time (or inclination) to watch a film for a couple of hours in the evening.

Just a suggestion.

Regards

Javed

Did you make this suggestion to the individual hotels? I think that would be your best approach.

While we are on the subject, this is somthing that I've found substandard with most Marriotts I've stayed at in the US - really limited channels. At my home, I really do have 200+ channels, and rarely do they have more than about 30 or so at most hotels. Now I'm not saying that Marriott should have an extensive list, but most major stations and all local stations would be nice. I'm not going to list the ones I miss, just get frustrated that there is such a lack of programing.

I suspect this is from some contract that marriott has with a service provider (like DirectTV or something). Someday, Marriott should negoitate for more channels of programing.

Free HS internet is much more important to me than TV. Free wireless is more important as well.

Billy

Javed,

I would be happy to pass on your suggestion. Dingo has a good point as well. I would recommend you go to the following link on marriott.com to supply your feedback there as well.

https://marriott.com/suggest/suggest.mi

Thanks!

From the select service prospective this is a 50/50 answer. 50% is that Mariott does have a set of minimums that each brand hotel must have for that hotel's QA inspections. But most hotel's as you've seen skate by with the bare minimum of channels. This goes into the other 50% which is long term contracts.
Let's say that when hotel X opens they sign up with On Command or whomever. That contract is locked for a long time, appox. seven years.
Even if that hotel whishes to upgrade their package they can only do that by usually paying more and always by lengthening the terms of the contract.

So if On Command's package to hotel X looked good when the contract was signed, but now 3 years into a 7 year contract the offerings and technology of the package are outdated the hotel is forced to either upgrade with On Command which stretches out the contract or they just sit on their hands and wait for the contract to run its course and look for someone else.

In most cases the hotel will not spend more to upgrade with On Command so they will just sit on their hands.

I'll be the contrarian. I'm fine with the TV channels and in fact my last hotel stay had like 70. It frankly pissed me off. When I am getting ready in the morning the last thing I want to do is spend ten minutes finding Fox or CNN or whatever. I want to find it, turn it up really loud to wake up my neighbors, then take a hot shower while listening to the TV. But I would like to come to your house and scroll through all 200 channels.

Ironically, it looks like a lot of hotels recently upgraded their On Command service ("Win a BMW Z4" menu option). The choices are still limited, however - Local channels (WB and UPN may not be there), HBO, a couple of CNN's, a couple of ESPN's, TBS, Weather and a couple of stragglers. MTV, Comedy Central, Bravo and SpeedTV are never there. Heck, you get a better variety on Song airlines (http://www.flysong.com/song_and_you/...ment/index.jsp) !

The lower end Marriott properties (Fairfield, some Courtyards) seem to have a broader selection but it looks like they just get a feed from the local cable company (hint-hint). If you go down to the bar at a lot of Marriott properties, you will see that they can get channels that are not in the rooms so the signal is the building somewhere!

Do they have to save the bandwidth for those second-run PPV movies and lame porn?

While we're on the subject, is there any way to get FOX News in European hotels?

My favorite Marriotts in Europe all have CNN, but not FOX. Are they aware that (in the US at least) FOX has about three times the viewership that CNN does?

for years i have been writing about this - no one at Marriott seems to care.