What Impact, If Any, Will Marriott and Netflix Deal Have on the Airline Industry?
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APEX Insight: The logical progression from the BYOD trend is BYOC, bring-your-own-content, and Marriott’s deal with Netflix enables guests to do just that – but will the airline industry follow?
Scented pillows and fluffy bathrobes are nice, but when it comes to hotel amenities, surveys for the past two years running from Hotels.com have found that the two things most guests really want are fast and free Wi-Fi and a free breakfast. But once Marriott rolls out their recently-announced in-room Netflix service, something tells me that free breakfast might just drop a notch or two on the list.
While the demand for free, reliable Wi-Fi has soared in recent years, the concept of finally being able to enjoy the streaming subscription services guests enjoy at home on something other than a personal electronic device or laptop screen in a hotel room, beats free bagels and a schmear every time.
And with airlines increasingly taking their cues from the hospitality industry – as we reported last week, several carriers have even begun referring to their passengers as “guests.” And with JetBlue passengers chomping at the bit to begin streaming their Amazon Prime content in flight, one would guess that deals like the Marriott-Netflix pact would signal sweeping changes in the airline industry.
But one would be wrong, says industry analyst Henry Harteveldt, the founder of San Francisco-based Atmosphere Research Group. “The Marriott-Netflix deal is irrelevant to airlines,” he says, adding that the industries are such very different beasts. Having run marketing for a luxury hotel company in the past, Harteveldt says that despite their best efforts to rebrand themselves as flying hotels, with a few notable exceptions, most major carriers have a tenuous grasp of the true meaning of hospitality.
“There are universities that teach true hospitality [and] none focus on airlines,” notes Harteveldt. “Airlines are in the transportation business. They are logistics companies [that] take every step to cut costs.” Besides that, Harteveldt says that a number of airlines already license Netflix original series like House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, which they store and show on their in-flight entertainment systems. And the truth of the matter, says Harteveldt, is that there are very few airlines flying today that offer the bandwidth to support streaming content from any provider.
“Content on demand is the new standard.” – Henry Harteveldt, analyst, Atmosphere Research Group
That said, Harteveldt notes that the key takeaway from the Marriott-Netflix pact is that whether it be in a hotel room or an airplane cabin, guests and/or passengers today want to make their own content choices. “It boils down to one word: control. We want to watch (and listen to) what we want, when we want,” he says. “Sometimes it’s the latest blockbuster, sometimes it’s binge-watching a favorite TV series … sometimes it’s a foreign, independent documentary. Content on demand is the new standard.”
Moving forward, Harteveldt says: “It will be interesting to see if airlines allow passengers to pre-order content to be stored and made available on their flight. Then again, that’s what tablet computers and services like Netflix are for.”