Providing Streaming Services in STR

[Jeffrey Page]

Hello,

I was just cleared to close my first STR in Deep Creek Lake, MD. The closing is on Monday. Woo hoo! The property is turn key from a previous investor. So, I'm ready to hit the ground running with majority of the set up process.

One thing I’ve been debating is providing streaming services account on the roku TVs. Do I just download the apps and let guest use their preferred apps with their logins? Provide just the basics of Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu? Or something else?

What do you do in your STR? What are the average guest expectations in your experience?

Thanks!

[Dominic A.]

We use firesticks and provide a few different services with it (Netflix, Disney, etc.). If you're not providing cable or satellite, it makes it a bit more of a nice touch (keeps guests happy and relaxed).

Very infrequently, guests will log into their own accounts, we try to make a habit of checking and always ask (in our guidebook) that they let us know if they've logged out of our provided account. Even if they have the services at home though, they just pick up wherever they were from our guest account.

Roku does have the cool Guest feature (that @Derick Bonsu mentioned earlier) which resets all the passwords at checkout (maybe you know that already); last I checked, it logs out of absolutely every account which didn't quite work for us because we wanted to provide at least one or two options for folks...but it could be perfect if you're not planning to provide streaming.

For what it's worth, the decision to pay for streaming services was as simple as asking about 15 different "boomer" travellers what they thought of logging into their own accounts. A small sample group, but all 15 said (without hesitation) they have no idea what the Netflix password is; they'd have to call someone.