Can you judge a hotel by its TV lineup?

After you’ve spent some significant time in hotels you start to notice trends. One trend I’ve noticed, and have been thinking about lately, are the TV channel lineups on hotel TVs.

I have started to notice that most (not all) but most hotels that cater to business travelers have primarily news and sports oriented channels. For example, the Hilton Green Park London has 5 sports channels, 4 news channels, 4 foreign language channels (2 of which are news related), 1 music channel and 1 local channel carrying primarily British talk and variety shows.   At breakfast time you can tell, based on the number of gold/diamond members redeeming breakfast benefits, that the majority of frequent travelers here are men.  There were a few families, a few “other” tourists and a handful of women who appeared to be business travelers.

So is there a correlation between the high concentration of male frequent travelers and the number of sports and news channels?  The hotel says yes, that absolutely plays into the decision of what channels are carried.

Now, as I think about other Hilton stays I’ve had over the last two years (and admittedly there’s only been 4) I can also say that the TV channels were predominantly sports and news oriented.

Let’s compare to Sheraton hotels. I’ve stayed at many Sheraton’s and they seem to have a very different TV channel profile.  There are certainly plenty of news and sports channels, but there seem to be more choices that are targeted to women and families.  In the last 4 Sheraton’s I’ve stayed in (the last being the one in Tyson’s Corner, VA, there was a Home and Garden channel, TLC and cartoon channel. Sheraton’s seem to be more family oriented in many locations.

One of my favorites, Le Meridien (also a Starwood brand), has one of the most expansive choice of foreign channels I’ve ever seen.  Thinking about the Le Meridien (LM) Bangkok, Brussels, Piccadilly (London), Koh Samui & Khao Lak (Thailand) all have a large variety of foreign language channels – and not just 1 in each language.  I also notice that most LMs have a huge range of foreign language speakers in the lobby.

So, is there a correlation between the hotel and the TV channels? I’d say yes based on my experiences.  It seems that the type of frequent travelers at a hotel drive the hotel’s choice in TV channels.

What do you think?