Moby Hospitality Insights | April 2026 | 6 min read
Ι And why the in-room TV is no longer an afterthought, it’s a make-or-break moment in the guest experience.
Today’s hotel guest arrives with more ways to watch content than ever before, whether it is a curated queue of their top shows, their favourite streaming app, and a game they absolutely cannot miss. In a single night, that room might be a live sports bar at 5PM, a Netflix lounge at 7PM, and a highlight reel catch up session by midnight.
Whether they’re flipping through trusted cable channels or diving into their personal streaming library, modern guests expect it all. The question isn’t whether your guests are streaming, they are. The question is whether your property’s TV setup is keeping up with them.
The Numbers Don't Lie: Streaming Is the New Normal
The habits your guests have built at home are coming with them to your property. And the data is hard to ignore.
This is not niche behaviour. Nine in ten Canadians are streaming content on some device, in some form. Netflix alone reached 15.4 million Canadians in 2024. YouTube is close behind, used by more than a third of the country for free streaming content.
The screen is no longer a scheduled, passive experience. It is on-demand, personal, and increasingly untethered from any cable provider. For hotel operators, the implication is direct: the guest arriving at your property tonight has almost certainly built their home viewing life around streaming. Walking into a room with no familiar apps, no way to cast, and a cable guide they haven’t used in years creates an immediate and unnecessary experience gap.
The Cord Has Been Cut, and It Is Not Coming Back
Your guests don’t watch TV the way they did five years ago, and they don’t expect to in your hotel room either.
The cord-cutting story in Canada is one of consistent, compounding momentum. Nearly half of all Canadian households ended 2024 without a cable, satellite, or TV subscription. By 2027, forecasters expect that to be the majority, 54% of Canadian households cord-free and counting.
The implication for hospitality is clear: a growing share of your guests will arrive without any frame of reference for a traditional cable guide. What they will have is a phone full of streaming apps, a preference for on-demand, and an expectation that your in-room TV can meet them where they are.
Live Sports: Where the TV Still Wins
The one thing a phone screen, a personal streaming account, and a smart TV alone cannot fully replace.
Streaming has reshaped how Canadians consume almost everything on TV. Live sports are the clear exception. Nearly half of Canadian sports viewers use a combination of linear TV and streaming just to track down the game they want. That behaviour tells you something important: live sport is still must-watch television, and your guests will notice whether your property delivers it.
A guest travelling for a conference still wants to catch the game. A family on a road trip does not want to miss the playoffs. A solo traveller will clock which channels your property carries before settling in for the night. Live sport cannot be paused, saved for later, or watched on a personal Netflix account the way a series can. When a guest wants to watch the Blue Jays, Flames, or the Raptors live, they need the right channels on the TV in their hotel room.
Moby’s hospitality packages include all five TSN feeds and the full Sportsnet regional lineup, commercially licensed for hospitality use. A guest in Calgary gets Sportsnet Flames coverage. A guest in Vancouver gets Sportsnet Pacific. French speaking guests across Quebec have RDS and TVA Sports. It feels local because it is local.
And for the games that fall outside your channel package, a niche league, an international tournament, or a sport your guest follows on their own streaming subscription, Moby’s compatible TVs support casting directly from a guest’s personal device. So, whether the channel lives on TSN or on their own app, the big screen in the room is always the best seat in the house.
What the Modern Hotel Guest Actually Expects
Four things every modern hotel guest now takes for granted.
1. A screen that works with their apps, not against them
Guests are used to casting, signing in, and controlling content with their phone. An in-room TV that makes this seamless is a quiet win. One that doesn’t? A frustration that ends up in the review.
2. Live Canadian channels they actually watch
CBC, CTV, Global, local news, weather, and sports are not optional. They are the channels guests reach for first. Regional feeds matter too — a guest in Edmonton expects Edmonton news, not a generic national feed.
3. The ability to watch on their schedule
Catch Up TV, Restart TV, and Cloud DVR let guests watch when it works for them. This is standard at home. It should be standard in your hotel.
4. Reliability, every single time
Buffering during the championship game or a frozen screen mid-episode isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s the kind of thing that gets mentioned in reviews and remembered at checkout.
The Moby Solution
One provider. Everything your guests expect. Nothing they don't.
Your guests have already changed how they watch. Moby is the one stop solution that keeps your property ahead of that shift whether it is live sports, streaming, casting, local channels, and 24/7 Canadian support, Moby does it all, all under one simple package.
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Give us a few details and a Moby Hospitality Advisor will be in touch to book a full review of your existing services. Experience our One Stop Shop for Internet, TV and Voice with Moby Hospitality.