Is Your Building Selling Hospitality or Healthcare?

Over the past 30 days it has become clear to me that a certain amount of schizophrenia exists in the Senior Housing industry. On the one hand, providers must offer a certain level of healthcare services – or assistance – to the residents in their building. On the other hand, more and more operators are taking a cue from our friends in the hotel business, and are beginning to offer a suite of hospitality services that help differentiate their building from the one down the block. Community concierges, health clubs, pools, spas, and hot tubs are just a few examples, and these services are becoming must-haves for all providers.

There is one major technology product that the Senior Housing industry is completely missing if they ever want to look more like their hotel brothers. And that is Video-on-Demand (VoD). Doesn’t nearly every business-class two-star hotel now offer a VoD product? Don’t you expect it when you travel? How much do you think that hotel owner generates per-room on VoD services? Let’s say you stay in a $100 a night room, and order “The Bourne Ultimatum” as a pay-per-view movie. Doesn’t that movie cost you about nine dollars—nearly ten percent of the room cost? Yet we business travelers don’t think twice about the up-charge, or that the hotel operator is significantly increasing his nightly per-room revenue. I think there is a lesson here for our industry.

If you want to generate additional revenue per room each month then you have to offer services that your residents will happily pay for—and VoD is one of them.

As I write this, the annual HIMSS Conference is just wrapping up in Orlando. Since last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we’ve all seen newspaper and TV news reports of all the new gadgets that are being introduced to the public—new TVs, personal video recorders (PVR), HDTV, plasma screens, the list is almost endless. Well, VoD is not one of those new technologies. It’s been around almost 15 years—look at companies like LodgeNet that provide services to hundreds of thousands of hotels rooms. Can you name one major senior housing chain that has a VoD product available to its residents (guests)? I can’t.

But we are getting closer, and the rest of this month’s editorial should be food for thought. If you’re interested in generating another $30-40 per month per apartment in your building then look into VoD. The original investment may seem large, but the ROI comes very quickly.

VoD offers consumers the unique ability to choose movies, distance learning and online courses, Interactive Television (iTV), books and video games, delivered on-demand in full-motion, full-screen video to your television. Current technology uses the existing wiring in your building, so no new wires are required. The systems are designed for easy installation and enable a secure connection to resident rooms, conference rooms, public spaces, and administration offices. Billing systems offer simple integration into the master billing for each room, so there is no complicated accounting for the building owner. Service providers can deploy to most 100-unit buildings in as little as 30 days with no disruption to the regular routine of the community. If you are looking for ways to differentiate your facility in a competitive market, and provide a quality-of-life enhancing amenity for your residents that produces incremental revenue then take time to learn about the current state of the art in Video-on-Demand.

BB