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I was on a plane flight with an executive from the hospitality industry not too long ago, who told me a very interesting story – about the impact of flat panel televisions on hotel room occupancy. According to this exec, flat panel TV’s drove down industry occupancy rates.

No, seriously.

Apparently the space savings and lower power consumption of a flat panel TV (think about it, they’re quite a bit smaller and draw far less energy) allowed hotels to skip having to put giant media cabinets in their rooms. And they could save on their total power (and air conditioning) envelope, as well. Which freed up space, power and budget for more rooms. Which led to a glut of new rooms, and the rest falls into place.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with a CIO at a large financial institution in midtown Manhattan a few months back. She’d just been promoted to be the CIO of her company, and in one of her first meetings with the CEO, brought him a picture of the roof of their building.

Care to guess why?