Do Guests Prefer Hotel Cable TV Or Streaming? How To Choose For Your Venue
Hotel entertainment has come a long way from the days when flipping through local cable channels was the highlight of in-room downtime. Today’s guests expect the same on-demand convenience they enjoy at home, meaning streaming services have become just as essential as traditional cable.
For hoteliers, the question isn’t simply which to choose, but how to create a system that best fits modern guest expectations. This guide explores the strengths of both cable TV and streaming services, how each impacts the guest experience, and why the smartest properties are finding ways to offer both through integrated entertainment platforms.
- What is Hotel Cable TV?
- What are Hotel Streaming Services?
- Which Do Hotel Guests Prefer: Cable TV or Streaming Services?
- The Hospitality Network Solution: An Integrated Hotel IRE Platform
What is Hotel Cable TV?
Hotel cable television refers to cable access available within hotel rooms, almost always free of additional charge to hotel guests. Accessible via hotel room televisions, hotel cable channels often include a variety of:
- Local affiliate channels, such as CBS, NBC and ABC.
- National channels, such as TNT, TBS, BET.
- Premium channels, such as HBO, Cinemax, Stars,
Flipping through channels from bed has been an integral part of the hotel experience for decades, but the technology supporting hotel cable television has shifted over time. One modern solution hotels use to distribute cable across their rooms is a hotel cable TV distribution system.
What is a Hotel Cable TV Distribution System?
A hotel cable TV distribution system delivers television signals from a singular source to multiple rooms across your property. Here’s how it works:
- One central control center receives signals from cable providers, satellites, or other sources and processes signals for distribution across your venue.
- Then, the control center distributes signals via cables to systems set up within each guest room. Here’s how it works:
Because of their wired connections, hotel cable TV distribution systems typically provide reliable access to cable television for guests. Some modern systems even integrate access to hotel cable with streaming services, leading to a holistic IRE entertainment solution for guests.
What are Hotel Streaming Services?
Hotel streaming services refer to any number of streaming services available directly through hotel televisions. Pretty much any streaming service can be a hotel streaming service depending on a hotel television’s system; in turn, picking which ones are right for your hotel is essential to the success of your in-room entertainment system.
What Are the Best Hotel TV Streaming Services?
There is no “best” hotel TV streaming service; the quality of streaming services is incredibly subjective, varying based on the specific streaming habits and content interests of any individual guest. When determining which streaming services may be “best” for mass appeal, however, hoteliers should consider each service’s subscriber-base.
Because most hotel guests sign on to their own streaming accounts when using these services within their rooms, making sure your hotel offers the services with the highest probability of use is integral to guest satisfaction. According to FlixPatrol, some of the streaming services with the highest number of worldwide subscribers include:
- Netflix: 301,630,000 subscribers
- Amazon Prime: 200,000,000 subscribers
- Disney+: 127,800,000 subscribers
- HBO Max: 125,700,000 subscribers
- Paramount+: 77,700,000 subscribers
- Hulu: 55,500,000 subscribers
- Peacock: 41,000,000 subscribers
These subscriber counts don’t necessarily correlate with what streaming services hotel guests will use the most; Amazon Prime subscribers, for example, also include a bevy of users subscribed to Prime for online shopping rather than content streaming. Offering this selection of streamers, however, will likely satisfy a vast swath of your guests.
What is the Best Streaming Device for Hotels?
While many guests bring and connect their own streaming devices when traveling to hotels, hotels themselves shouldn’t consider implementing specific streaming devices in their rooms. Streaming devices require manual set-ups and updates, leading to archaic, time-consuming regulation in even smaller hotels. Streaming devices also lack branding customization for specific hotels, eliminating a key means of guest experience personalization.
Which Do Hotel Guests Prefer: Cable TV or Streaming Services?
Based on numbers alone, most hotel guests prefer streaming services to cable television. Multiple studies have shown that the vast majority of Americans prefer streaming to cable in general.
According to Pew Research, 83% of Americans say they watch streaming services — including an overwhelming 92% of people within the 30-49 year old demographic — as opposed to only 36% that say they currently subscribe to cable television. Statista also found that streaming hit a record 40.3% share of TV usage in the US in July 2024, eclipsing 27.2% of share from cable.
While the numbers support more hotel guests using streaming services than cable, these studies support general consumer habits rather than user habits within hotels. Because hotel cable television has become such a mainstay within the industry, guests that don’t subscribe at home may still be disappointed by a lack of cable options within a hotel.
For these reasons, the ultimate solution to in-room entertainment doesn’t choose one of cable or streaming; it combines both with innovative additional solutions to deliver a comprehensive IRE platform.
The Hospitality Network Solution: An Integrated Hotel IRE Platform
As guest preferences evolve, so should the way hotels deliver entertainment. While streaming services dominate viewing habits at home, cable still provides dependable, familiar content that many travelers expect to find during their stay. The key isn’t picking sides — it’s integrating both into a seamless, guest-centric experience.
Hospitality Network helps hotels achieve exactly that with tailored, fully integrated IRE platforms designed to meet every guest’s viewing needs. Our platforms include access to:
- OTT Streaming Access to Guest Favorites: Offer popular streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube directly through in-room TVs.
- Custom Free-to-Guest HD Channel Lineups: Deliver curated, property-specific television channels in high definition at no additional cost to guests.
- Brand-Integrated Entertainment Platform: Customize your interface to highlight your property’s unique branding and messaging.
- Built-In Revenue Opportunities: Promote on-property amenities or partner offers through integrated advertising and marketing.
- Fully Digital Guest Compendium: Replace traditional printed materials with an all-digital, contactless guide to enhance convenience and safety.
Contact us today and learn how we can help build a customized platform to support your hotel’s unique goals and guest-base.
