How To Turn Your Hotel Room Into A Home Cinema

Every now and again on our travels, a night in seems pretty reasonable. There are many reasons as to why.

You might have had a long day travelling and hitting the streets of Bangkok or Tokyo just don’t seem that appealing right now. You may have an important event first thing in the morning, perhaps you’re simply not feeling that well. 

However, hotel rooms can be dull. Oh, so very dull. Hundreds of TV channels, but only the news that is in your language, confining you to either Bloomberg or a night watching foreign Netflix over hotel Wi-Fi on your smartphone. 

It really doesn’t need to be that way though, and with a few subtle additions you can transform your hotel room into a home cinema.

Firstly, Unlock Your Content

The first thing to do is open up the content you need. Across the world you’ll likely suffer from geoblocking at some point. Netflix can only allow you to watch shows or movies that are licensed in the country you’re in. 

So, while you may have a Netflix account that was set up in the USA, if you’re in France, you’ll only receive the shows that are available in France. 

However, there are ways around this. Using a VPN will allow you to stream US films and TV shows no matter where you are in the world. There are plenty of VPNs available, whether you’re looking to stream from a mobile or laptop, and you can visit reviews of some of the best with a simple Google search.

Maximising Your Set-Up

Once you’ve unlocked your content and found the film or show you want to watch, it’s all about transforming your space. We’re so often confined to watching movies from our iPhone screens, but there are a couple of accessories out there to make your experience a little more cinematic. 

There are a range of travel projectors available to suit all budgets, from the $500 Optoma ML750ST, to the tiny ZTE Spyro 2 at a similar cost.

Take a look at this guide on how to find the best projector 2020for your traveling time.

The latter is perfect for travel, transforming a boring, white hotel wall into a cinema screen.

You can also pick up a number of cheaper alternatives for your smartphone. You can pick up a cardboard smartphone projector for as little as $20, which can also be just as effective for a one-off movie in your room.

A fair bit of feng shui may be involved to make the transformation complete. Some of the generic art which has a local landmark with coloured tint, may have to be removed to find a big enough space on the wall, while you can also move the furniture around to find the most comfortable space. All that’s left is to ring down to room service and see if they will send some popcorn up. Perfect.