Tourism and Leisure

The digital switchover means that all UK tourist and leisure facilities will have to go digital to continue delivering TV services to rooms, bars and facilities. For holiday accommodation providers changes will have to be made to equipment in rooms, and/ or to the system delivering the TV signal.

What does digital switchover mean for the tourism and leisure industry?

Unless TV systems are updated, accommodation providers and their guests’ may find that they have no access to television services when the analogue TV signals are switched off. You will need to choose how you receive your digital TV signal. This could be:

• Through a satellite dish (Sky or freesat from Sky).
• Through your aerial (Freeview, Top up TV or BT Vision).
• Phone line (Tiscali)
• Cable (Virgin Media or Small World)

If you have a communal TV aerial system - one set of aerials /satellites serving multiple TV connection points, you may need to upgrade it to enable you and your guests to receive a digital TV
signal.

There are many factors that could affect how you upgrade your TV system including; cost and budget, and the level of service provision that will satisfy guests. You need to start planning now to make sure you don’t get left behind and to allow your guests to continue to receive the service they expect.

There are many different types of holiday accommodation and the method of upgrading for digital TV may differ for each type.

Televisions for use in hotels

It is possible to use ordinary televisions, intended for domestic use, on many hotel systems. However, there are televisions with features particularly suited to hotels including:

• the ability to lock many of the controls, such as tuning and brightness, so that users are unable to change them;
• the ability to configure all the settings on the television in a few seconds, via a special programming device;
• a clock and alarm that turns on the television. Some televisions with alarms clocks extract the time from teletext signals which are only available on analogue transmissions. At present most digital receivers do not generate any form of teletext time signal for setting the clock.

Contact us for information on how to get your properties ready for the digital TV switchover.