Some hotel brands, including Marriott, in 2016 began introducing Apps on its in-room entertainment systems. Among these Apps is iHeartRadio.
Now, the App from the radio broadcasting industry’s No. 1 owner by station count and revenue is set to appear in a lot more hotel rooms, and a TV need not be turned on to use the App.
Hospitality tech firm KEYPR, which uses a cloud-based platform, has teamed up with iHeartRadio “to seamlessly bring a new custom music experience into hotel rooms across the country.”
Access is available through an in-room tablet device, KEYPR says. On the back end, hotels receive reports with usage and behavior data that they can use to improve service and further enhance the guest experience.
“Offering an easy-to-use seamless music experience everywhere listeners are is paramount to iHeartRadio,” said Jessica Jerrick, EVP/Business Development and Partnerships for iHeartMedia. “We are excited to work with KEYPR on our first hospitality integration. Together, we further enhance the guest experience by bringing iHeartRadio’s world-class music content and top personalities directly into their hotel room through KEYPR’s innovative platform.”
This partnership also opens up the opportunity for hotels on the KEYPR platform to curate custom playlists.
Will hotel guests use a provided tablet to access the iHeartRadio App?
KEYPR CEO Robert Stevenson says yes.
“Guest engagement on the KEYPR platform is consistently above 90% across our entire property mix,” he notes. “Our rich data shows that hotel guests are using our enabled devices to manage their stay, order services, make reservations and access entertainment. Continuing to grow our content library and working first-ever integrations with great partners like iHeartRadio only helps to increase that engagement and further our commitment to delight our hotel customers and their guests.”
KEYPR also provides keyless entry to hotel rooms.
RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION: We love bringing audio, in particular AM and FM audio streams, to hotel guests, in addition to the on-demand personalized options that iHeartRadio brings to its users. It’s a great App, and we hope hotel guests use tablets that aren’t their own to listen to music instead of their own devices. We just hope that the more tablets from KEYPR there are with iHeartRadio Apps does not result in the elimination of AM/FM clock radios from hotel rooms — even the cheap $4.95 pieces of garbage we had in Nashville and Las Vegas while covering, of all things, NAB events. We worry because, as previously noted by RBR+TVBR, an August stay at a Hampton Inn in Dayton, Ohio, was alarming because there was no radio in the room to speak of. What if there was an emergency? We’re supposed to turn on the TV and see what’s going on? Or, we’re supposed to turn to an App and then figure out what the local stations are, and go on a hunt for information instead of flipping a switch and a dial? Technology is fine and dandy until the internet goes down, or the cable goes out. Let’s not lose the radio in guest rooms across the U.S. It could be a matter of life and death if a twister’s on the way.
