A hotel is full of people who have never been inside it before. They arrive at odd hours, they are hunting for a meeting room on the third floor, they want to know whether the spa is open and when breakfast stops, and most would rather work it out than queue at reception. Screens answer those questions where people are already standing.
This page covers what belongs on hotel screens, the wayfinding pattern that works, what six and forty screens cost over five years, and what easyCMS will not do.
The advantages
- Answer the questions guests would otherwise ask at reception
- Door signs and an events board that follow your Outlook or Google calendars, with each client’s logo
- Weather and world clocks for guests who arrived from another time zone
- One screen per floor replaces a wall of printed direction signs
- Staff notices on back of house screens, not on a noticeboard nobody reads
- One-time licences, so a screen added in year three adds nothing to a monthly bill
What actually goes on the screens
Hotels buy screens for the lobby, then discover the useful ones are on the fourth floor and in the staff canteen. Give each screen one job.
Lobby and reception
Check-in times, breakfast, where the bar and lifts are, today’s events and the weather. If you change money, show today’s exchange rates too.
The daily events board
Conferences, weddings and meetings, with room, time and the client’s logo, live from your calendars. It saves the front desk giving the same answer forty times a morning.
Lift lobbies: one screen per floor
One portrait screen facing the lifts, showing only that floor: room numbers left and right, meeting rooms, the fire exit.
Meeting rooms and conference wayfinding
The session now and next beside each door, and the full programme in the foyer, from the same bookings. See meeting room displays.
Bar, restaurant and breakfast
Breakfast at 06:30, then lunch, then the evening drinks list, switching by itself. See digital menu boards.
Spa, pool and gym
Opening hours, classes, the treatment menu and safety notices. One screen at the entrance usually covers it.
Back of house
Rotas, today’s arrivals and training dates in the staff canteen. InterContinental in Warsaw started here, and it is the easiest place to learn.
Meeting rooms and events, live from your calendars
In easyCMS Studio, open Rooms & bookings, list your function rooms once by floor, and give each one its calendar link from Outlook, Microsoft 365 or Google, or paste the day’s functions from Excel. The events board, the floor boards and every door sign read the same bookings and change by themselves when a booking moves. Each event can carry the client’s logo, found on the web in a click, and the name guests should read instead of the calendar’s internal one.
The door sign is set to one room, the foyer board to every room or one floor, with an arrow to each room from where that screen hangs. A ballroom that splits in two is set up once, so a booking for the whole room shows on both doors. Three rooms are included; more need the Conference rooms add-on at 299€, once. Templates, set-up and costs: meeting and conference room displays.
Where to put screens, and what size
| Location | Suggested size | Orientation | Job it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reception desk | 49”–55” | Portrait | Times, weather, today’s events |
| Lobby feature wall | 2–4 × 55” | Landscape | Brand film, city guide |
| Lift lobby, each floor | 43”–49” | Portrait | Floor directory, room ranges, exits |
| Outside each meeting room | 22”–32” | Landscape or portrait | Now, next, organiser |
| Conference foyer | 55”–65” | Landscape | Full day programme |
| Bar or restaurant entrance | 43”–55” | Portrait | Menu, service times |
| Breakfast room | 43”–55” | Landscape | Menu, allergens, service times |
| Spa, pool or gym | 43” | Landscape | Timetable, hours, safety |
| Staff canteen | 43”–49” | Landscape | Rotas, occupancy, notices |
In a lift lobby put the centre of the screen at about 1.6 m; door panels sit lower, around 1.4 m. Lobbies are full of glass, so brightness decides the specification: a commercial panel runs at 350 to 700 nits against 250 to 350 on a domestic television. See the LCD display guide. A lobby video wall is possible, but synchronised playback is Android only, so pick the player accordingly.
Keeping the events board current
Choose on day one where the bookings come from. All three ways feed the same Rooms & bookings page in Studio, and you can mix them room by room.
A calendar link. Outlook and Microsoft 365 publish a calendar as an iCal (.ics) link, and Google Calendar gives each calendar a secret iCal address. Paste the link into the room and easyCMS reads it every few minutes. Repeating meetings, time zones, cancellations and private bookings are understood: a private booking shows as “Booked”, without its name.
Paste from Excel. Hotel sales and catering systems such as Opera or Delphi export the day’s functions to a spreadsheet. Copy the rows (date, start, end, room, event, client) and paste them into Studio. It is the honest route for most hotels, because the function diary rarely lives in Outlook.
Typed in. The duty manager adds or changes a booking from a phone in a minute.
Whatever the source, you can give a booking the name guests should read, the client’s logo and a photo, or hide it from screens, and those choices survive every calendar update.
Watch out easyCMS does not connect directly to Opera, Delphi or another property or sales and catering system, and it does not sign in to Microsoft 365 or Google. It reads a published calendar link or what you paste.
What it costs
Take an independent hotel with six screens: reception, three lift lobbies, the breakfast room and the staff canteen. Above five screens you need the PRO account.
| Line | Cost |
|---|---|
| easyCMS PRO account, up to 25 displays, 5GB storage, includes 1 licence | 299 EUR one-time |
| 5 × extra licence at 66 EUR, bought in the same order | 330 EUR one-time |
| Software total, paid once | 629 EUR |
Most platforms charge per screen per month instead, typically between 8€ and 30€. At 20€:
| easyCMS | Subscription at 20 EUR/screen/month | |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 629 EUR | 1,440 EUR |
| Year 2 | 0 EUR | 1,440 EUR |
| Year 3 | 0 EUR | 1,440 EUR |
| Year 4 | 0 EUR | 1,440 EUR |
| Year 5 | 0 EUR | 1,440 EUR |
| Five-year total | 629 EUR | 7,200 EUR |
You pay once and the line stays flat.
- Licences added later are 99€ each instead of 66€.
- A hotel group can buy one PRO account per hotel, which is the cheapest route, or one Enterprise account at 1,290€ a year to run every property from one place under its own brand.
- One screen behind the desk and nothing more? The free plans from Yodeck or OptiSigns may be enough. easyCMS has no free plan.
- Hardware: an easyCMS Android player is 499€ and includes the licence for its screen. LG webOS and Samsung Tizen screens run the player inside the panel, with a 129€ licence each.
Every price is on the pricing page, and the longer comparison is in cost per screen.
Groups and multiple properties
For a group the real question is who may change what. Enterprise adds users, user groups, roles and permissions, so the brand team publishes anywhere, a general manager is scoped to their own hotel, and the spa manager touches only the wellness screens. It also puts the CMS on your own domain and branding, which matters when you hand logins to franchisees. See white label digital signage and users and permissions. Display monitoring is the other daily tool: when each screen last checked in, plus an on-demand screenshot of what it is playing, so head office can check a lobby screen in another city without ringing the duty manager.
Running it day to day
Who updates it
The duty manager runs the events board, marketing the lobby, food and beverage the menus, HR the staff screens. Minutes a day.
Scheduling
Breakfast from 06:30, the conference programme on conference days, a calmer evening loop, screens off overnight.
Network
Players only connect out, encrypted, with no ports to open. Read network requirements with your IT person before installation day.
When the network drops
Screens keep playing what is scheduled and catch up when the connection returns.
Getting started
Connect your first display, then pick a template from the hotel collection.
Watch out Do not put players on the guest Wi-Fi. A captive portal that asks for a room number will cut a player off the moment its session expires. Use the staff network, wired where you can.
What easyCMS will not do for a hotel
- No PMS integration. It does not read arrivals, room numbers, guest names or occupancy from your property management system, and it does not connect to a sales and catering system. Meeting room bookings come from a calendar link, an Excel paste or are typed in.
- No in-room TV system. This drives public area and back of house screens. It is not an in-room television platform and does nothing for room service ordering or guest billing.
- No guest-facing casting. Nobody can cast from a phone or laptop to a meeting room screen through easyCMS. If a conference client needs that, keep an HDMI input and a switcher on the room screen.
- You are not an administrator of the CMS. easyCMS hosts and runs it in the European Union, at Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany. You get your account, media and displays, not the server settings. If your IT department insists on owning the server, say so before you buy.
- No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification. We hold neither. What is true: EU hosting, encrypted player traffic, every display authorised before it receives content, no inbound port to open. For a Data Processing Agreement, email info@myeasycms.com.
easyCMS is hosted and supported by us in the European Union, which is why there is no monthly fee on the one-time plans. See digital signage with no monthly fee and pricing.
Questions hotels ask
Can the events board update itself from our diary?
Yes, if each room has a calendar in Outlook, Microsoft 365 or Google: paste its iCal link into the room in Studio’s Rooms & bookings and the screens follow it every few minutes. If your function diary lives in a sales and catering system, paste the day’s export from Excel instead. See meeting and conference rooms.
How many meeting rooms can we show?
Three rooms are included in every account. Beyond three, the Conference rooms add-on is 299€ once, for unlimited rooms. Each screen still needs its own display licence.
Do we need a screen on every floor?
No, but lift lobbies are the highest-value screens after reception, because that is where guests are lost and standing still. On a tight budget, start with reception, the busiest guest floor and the staff canteen.
Is there a monthly fee?
No, unless you choose Enterprise at 1,290€ a year. The account, the PRO account and every extra licence are one-time and lifetime.
What support is included?
25 written guides and an AI assistant at support, free to everyone, plus an Expert Support Hour at 25€ when you want an engineer on it. An expert support hour is 25€, comes with a written diagnosis and a fixed quote you approve first, and is refunded if the cause turns out to be a bug in easyCMS.
Where to start
Send us a rough list: how many screens, roughly where, one hotel or several, and whether you need hardware. We will come back with a firm figure and an honest view on whether PRO or Enterprise suits the properties you have. Email info@myeasycms.com, call +48 509 937 137, or use the support request form. You can also browse the full feature list or the guide for offices and internal communication.
