A travel agency lobby is one of the few places where a client waits with a purchase on their mind. A wall TV running CastHub turns that wait into a demonstration: the family who walked in with a pile of card points sees, on the big screen, the business class trip to London those points can buy. This guide covers what to show, how to get a solved trip from AwardMath onto the screen in under a minute, what an AI assistant adds, what stays private, and what it costs.

Why should a travel agency put a TV in the lobby?

A lobby screen sells the agency’s expertise before the consultation starts. Clients see live examples of trips other families booked on points, this week’s packages, and the destinations the agency knows best. CastHub runs that loop on a $99.99 Amazon Signage Stick behind any TV, so a small agency gets a working display for the price of one printed poster run.

The reason it works is timing. Online travel sites compete on price. An in-person agency competes on confidence, and confidence is easiest to build when the client can see the work. A screen that shows a real itinerary, with the points math spelled out, does that without an agent saying a word. The wider lobby digital signage guide covers reception and meeting room screens for other kinds of office; this page is specific to agencies that sell travel face to face.

What does a travel agency lobby screen show while clients wait?

Five things earn their place: a solved points trip, a dated guide on how transfers and award pricing work, a short destination reel, a deals board with real dates, and a welcome line with first names only. CastHub rotates them in one presentation, and the table below shows how each one reaches the screen and whether it survives a dropped connection.

Lobby content	What the client sees	How it reaches the screen	Plays offline
Solved points trip	The family’s own itinerary: route, cabin, points used, cash saved	Screenshot of the AwardMath plan uploaded as an image slide, or pushed by an AI assistant through the CastHub MCP server	Yes, image slides cache on the Amazon Signage Stick
Live AwardMath guide	A dated explainer on transfer partners or award pricing	Web page slide pointing at a public AwardMath guide URL	No, web page slides need a connection
Destination reel	Short video of the places the agency sells most	MP4 upload, 30 to 90 seconds at 1080p	Yes, on platforms that cache
Deals board	This week’s packages with dates and prices	Presentation built in the CastHub editor, or a published Google Slides deck as a web page slide	Uploaded deck yes, published deck no
Welcome and queue	Who is being seen next, by first name only	Text slide edited in the CastHub app, or a text alert from an assistant	Yes

The order matters. Put the solved trip and the welcome line first, because those are the two slides a new arrival reads. Keep the deals board short; a screen at viewing distance holds about six lines before people stop reading. Destination video should be silent, since a lobby with a phone ringing and a consultation in progress does not need a soundtrack.

How can a lobby screen show a family their trip on points?

Run the plan in AwardMath, then put the result on the screen. AwardMath takes a plain sentence such as “we have 250,000 Amex and 80,000 Chase and want London in business class for four” and returns up to three plans with every number dated and sourced. CastHub then shows that plan on the lobby TV as an image slide, where the family and the agent can walk through it together.

AwardMath is free to use, with no subscription and no account needed to build a plan, which suits an agency demonstration well. It never asks for card logins; the client says what they hold and corrects the wallet card if the site misheard. The plan shows which points to transfer, which to keep in reserve for a later trip, and what the redemption is worth against the fare a careful person would realistically pay. Those are exactly the questions a family asks an agent, so the screen answers them while the agent adds the parts software cannot: which dates to avoid, which cabin is worth it for a night flight, and what to do if availability moves.

Two cautions. AwardMath does not book the flight; the client books with the airline, and the agent adds value on that step. And award availability changes by the minute, so the site’s own advice applies: re-verify before anyone transfers points. A lobby slide is a demonstration of what is possible, not a confirmed booking, and it should say so in one line at the bottom.

How does an agent put an AwardMath plan on the screen in under a minute?

Screenshot the plan on the tablet, open the CastHub app, add the image to the lobby presentation, and save. The Amazon Signage Stick picks up the change on its next refresh and caches the image, so the slide keeps playing if the office internet drops. CastHub needs no design step for this: a full-screen screenshot of the AwardMath result reads well on a 55-inch TV.

For an agency that shows plans all day, keep a presentation called Lobby with two slots: a permanent welcome slide and a rotating “trip of the day” slot that the agent on duty replaces each morning. If the agency wants the plan to stay live rather than static, a public AwardMath guide URL can be added as a web page slide instead, which refreshes in the background. Web page slides play on the Amazon Signage Stick, Android TV and Apple TV; they do not play on Samsung Tizen or Roku, and they are never cached offline, which is why the screenshot route is the default for the solved trip itself. The visitor screens page covers the same choice for reception displays in other offices.

Can an AI assistant plan the trip and publish it to the TV?

Yes, with two connectors in one chat. AwardMath publishes an MCP connector whose plan_award_trip tool runs the same solver as the site, and CastHub publishes an MCP server with 58 tools across 10 domains that can create a presentation with content and assign it to the lobby screen. The agent types one request, previews the slide CastHub proposes, confirms it, and the TV updates.

The setup is short. In Claude, the agent adds the AwardMath connector link from the My Trips page, then adds the CastHub connector from the connect Claude guide, which uses OAuth 2.0 with PKCE so no CastHub password is pasted anywhere. From then on a sentence like “plan London in business class for the Nguyen family from their saved wallet and put the best plan on the lobby screen” does both halves. CastHub shows a preview of the change and waits for an explicit confirmation before it writes, and its tools are annotated as read-only, idempotent or destructive so the assistant treats “replace the lobby slide” differently from “list my screens”. Audit logging and rollback of assistant changes are on the CastHub roadmap and not shipped, so an agency that wants a change history should keep the day’s screenshots in a folder.

The AwardMath connector link carries the account key, and anyone holding it can read saved balances, so it belongs to the agency’s own AwardMath account, not to a client’s. The AI assistant guide explains the general pattern for other industries, and AwardMath’s connector page lists the four tools it exposes.

Which content should stay off a public lobby screen?

Anything that identifies a client beyond a first name. Full names, card balances tied to a person, booking references and passport details should never be on a screen that faces the street. CastHub web page slides do not authenticate, so nothing behind a login can appear on them anyway; the screenshot route puts the agent in control of exactly what the room sees.

A practical rule for the trip of the day: show the route, the cabin, the total points used and the cash saved, and label it with a first name or a nickname the family chose. AwardMath’s plan output already avoids account credentials because it never collects them, so the risk is what the agent captures in the screenshot, not what the tool holds. Crop before uploading. If the agency uses the assistant route, the same applies to the prompt: ask for a plan from the agency wallet or from balances typed in the chat, never from a client’s connector link.

What hardware does a travel agency lobby need?

One TV and one player per screen. The Amazon Signage Stick is $99.99 on Amazon, plugs into any HDMI port, caches images and uploaded video for offline playback, and accepts remote commands such as reboot and screen on or off. CastHub also runs on Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS and Windows if the agency already owns a smart TV.

A 50 to 55 inch consumer TV is enough for a lobby seen from a sofa three to four metres away, and a wall mount with the screen at standing eye height reads better than a tabletop stand. Set the TV to stay on and disable its screensaver, then let CastHub’s scheduled device commands turn the Signage Stick off at closing and on before opening. If the lobby has a second screen at the consultation desk, the same presentation can run there, or a separate one can show the client’s own plan while the lobby keeps rotating.

What does lobby signage cost for a travel agency?

A one-screen agency pays CastHub Basic at $12 a month, which covers up to 2 screens, plus one $99.99 Signage Stick. An agency with a lobby screen, a desk screen and a street-facing window screen still fits Basic; Pro at $35 a month covers up to 10 screens for a multi-office agency. AwardMath adds nothing to that, since it is free to use with no subscription.

Year one for a single lobby screen is $144 in software and $99.99 in hardware, $243.99 in total before the TV. Per-screen signage vendors typically charge $8 to $30 per screen per month, which lands in the same range for one screen and pulls ahead of CastHub only below about two screens; the CastHub pricing page lists every band, and every plan starts with a 14-day trial, with nothing charged until it ends.

How do you know the lobby screen is working?

Count conversations, not impressions. The useful signal is how often a client points at the screen and asks whether their own points could do that, and how many of those questions turn into a consultation. CastHub does not offer a self-serve proof-of-play report, so an agency should track the question in its booking notes rather than expect the screen to report it.

A simple test is to run two weeks with the trip of the day and two weeks without, and compare consultation bookings and points-related questions in the notes. Agencies that keep the screen current tend to see the difference in the first week, because the slide changes daily and regulars notice. The screen earns its keep when the agent hears “can you do that with my points” without having to bring it up.

Sources

AwardMath facts were read from the pages below on September 4, 2026. Re-check before you rely on them.

Page	URL	Fetched
AwardMath, how it works and what it costs	awardmath.com/	2026-09-04
AwardMath, connect an AI assistant	awardmath.com/help/connect-ai	2026-09-04
CastHub pricing	cast-hub.com/pricing/	2026-09-04
CastHub MCP overview	cast-hub.com/mcp/	2026-09-04

To try it, build a plan at awardmath.com/plan, screenshot the result, and add it to a CastHub presentation; CastHub pricing starts at $12 per month with a 14-day trial, nothing charged until it ends.