Plantation Bay taps Sky Cable service

CEBU, Philippines - Sharing a common goal of elevating customer experience and of increasing the growth of the local tourism industry, Plantation Bay Resort and Spa partnered with Sky Cable Corporation as the first hotel in the Philippines to subscribe with the network’s high-definition (HD) viewing service for all of its hotel rooms.

The leader in digital cable TV technology offers Sky Cable HD as a value-added service and top-up to any basic package, allowing its subscribers to enjoy clear picture and cinematic digital sound in a panoramic widescreen format.

Plantation Bay general manager Efren Belarmino said that the subscription to Sky Cable HD service for all of the rooms serves as an act of upgrading one of the hotel’s amenities from the usual, standard definition of television viewing.

“It is much more of an amenity, a very good one. Especially now that more guests are coming in, the market wants something sophisticated and we cannot go wrong with Sky Cable,” he said.

He also revealed that the hotel has allotted a “substantial” investment for the improved amenity.

He cited that although the international tourists account 60% of the guests’ profile of the hotel, the domestic market is also remarkably high and is fast-growing.

Korean nationals top the highest number of tourists who stay in the hotel and are then followed by the Japanese guests.

The hotel currently has 256 rooms but had availed 300 HD  modems from Sky Cable to also upgrade the cable viewing experience in its restaurant, lobby and some of the rooms with two TV units.

The cable provider will start to deploy the HD boxes inside the rooms of Plantation Bay at the first week of March.

Plantation Bay previously had its cable subscription service with Unicable which was then acquired by Sky Cable last May 2012.

Dicky Liwanag, head for corporate sales of Sky Cable, noted that the HD service has been readily available in the market but at a selective basis and is more concentrated on residential subscribers.

Out of the current 750,000 subscribers nationwide, seven percent or 35 000 of these residential clients are subscribed into Sky Cable HD.

Both Belarmino and Liwanag shared the same idea that the amenity upgrade of hotels to Sky Cable HD relatively boosts the growth of tourism industry, thus attracting more tourists to visit the country.

Liwanag then encouraged other hotels to acquire the same service upgrade that Plantation Bay has recently embarked to further enhance the customer experience of their hotel guests.

More than 90% of the hotels in Cebu alone are subscribed to Sky Cable, he said.

He added that there are also two hotels in Manila who have subscribed to Sky Cable HD but at a limited basis. (FREEMAN)