Trying to connect
I am well aware that this post is covering very sensitive ground for some so I’ll tread very carefully. There is a loud clamour among the vast majority of the online community for wi-fi to be available free of charge at any hotel. There are lists of hotels with free wi-fi and ‘walls of shame’ featuring those properties that shamelessly rip off their guests with profiteering connection costs.
The arguments for universal access are sound and strong. Business people need internet access more than they need a TV or phone; many leisure guests want to check messages and social networks while relaxing in their room; some will want to upload pictures and videos from the property, thus promoting the virtues of their temporary homes to whoever is interested. We all live in a wired world and don’t expect a hotel to restrict the oxygen that is our internet access.
So is there a case against universally free wi-fi? I believe there is, and it runs along these lines. First of all, nothing is free. Wi-fi costs are either included in the room rate or attract an additional charge, but they are no more free than the food we are served on a flight. So the question is, do we want a choice in whether we pay for wi-fi or do we want every guest to share this cost equally?
I had a job where for several years I would typically spend two or three nights each week in a soulless hotel room. Reliable internet access was everything. With nothing to do in the evening except get on with my work, a good connection to the office meant that I could do what I needed to do and hopefully reward myself with an early finish once I finally got home.
It’s not just business people that demand 24/7 connectivity. Whether they are bloggers, gamers or just bored kids travelling with their parents who want to keep in touch with friends on Facebook, a growing proportion of people want to be online whenever it suits them.
This proportion however is not 100%. There are still many folk (myself included in most hotel stays that I take with my wife) who don’t even think of logging on and don’t carry a PC or smart phone to be able to do so. What of those who enjoy a break from their online lives: should they pay for others to have access to their rooms? Perhaps we should also have a free mini-bar; after all, doesn’t everyone enjoy a whisky before bedtime?
Let me get one thing clear: I’m not trying to get hotels off the hook here. I believe any hotel that doesn’t offer internet access these days (that is reliable and fast) will suffer and rightly so. The proportion of those who shun the urge to get online is small and shrinking each year. And if I pay $300+ for a hotel room I don’t expect to have to pay extra for anything, whether it’s internet access, laundry or even a little drink in the room should I fancy one. Yes, I know it’s a fanciful expectation.
But if I’m looking for a budget room, especially in those places that take a leaf from the low-cost airlines and strip out essentials from their offering to bring down the costs to the lowest level, then I don’t want to pay a few extra quid for an internet service unless I’m going to use it; especially in a basic budget hotel where all I’m after is a bed and a shower.
It’s easy for us who spend much of our days online to consider internet access as an essential, alongside pillows on the bed and hot water. But internet access is really not in that category and many hotel guests still go happily without it. If I’m after the lowest cost room for a simple no-frills overnight stay, I’d like to have the option of paying £45 rather than £49 if I choose to disconnect for the night.
You just mentioned the answer! Free mini-bar & free WiFi! I’m booked!
Serious: If an accommodation would have an acceptable rate, that would be ok to charge for WiFi. Everything which is more than €1,- per day is too much! How high are the costs of the hotel per month? They should be fine with that rate! Most hotels don’t even offer good connections, so that they shouldn’t be even allowed to call themselves a hotel with WiFi.
Good article and an interesting debate will surely follow. I would argue that internet access is much like the many other services in a hotel that you may or may not use.
Some people eat more than others at the included breakfast. Some get their towels changed every day. Others spend hours in their room using electricity while some are hardly in the hotel let alone using any of the services. I wouldn’t expect any of them to be on a pay-as-you-go scheme. There may be a pool I have access to but never have time to use. Many facilities of a hotel are included in the room rate and often cost more to maintain than a internet connection.
On the other hand I wouldn’t expect phone calls to be free when I pick up the phone. Nor would i expect the on-demand movies to be free if I was so inclined to watch one. It comes down to general expectations and culture. If customers expect free wifi and the hotels around are offering it then it’s a must. If your competitors are not then there’s money to be made. Much like every business hotel charging extortionate rates for almost everything because the culture of company expenses rules in those establishments.
It’ll be interesting to see if this culture changes over the years. Maybe a free slow connection or a paid fast connection will be the future of hotel internet access.
Morning Andy…
Ahhh you’re a brave man to take on this subject…
Free wifi- its not a universal birth right but oneday it will be: we will live in a world without wires where anyone can access the internet from any corner of the world…
Until then, speaking from the budget end of the travel market, I certainly don’t expect free wifi when I pay £20 for a room but when I do get offered free wifi, I appreciate and value it. Recently I was in the Generator Hostel where they offer free wifi to people with their own laptops….as you can imagine, this is v.popular with their core travelling audience. They even have a very trendy chill-out room dedicated to their legion of internet surfers….
This must have costed them a fair bit to offer this free priviliege but given how competitive the London market is for budget accomodation…it could be the one thing that gives them the edge.
When we pay for no-frills we should expect no-frills but I feel the budget traveller nowadays does expect more and things like free wifi do make a difference …raises the brand value/perception of the hostel/hotel. Helps build an emotional connection to their brand which is v.important
Its not a deal breaker….. but ‘free wifi’ does make a difference.
Great … My room should be cheaper soon as Andy will be having cold showers and not hot ones. Not all of us like cold showers.
Oh and bedsheets. I have my own sleeping bad. Can I have a discount now too?
Erm, and that TV, I don’t watch it. Discount.
Eye catching title, of course. But the reality of this subject is it’s 2010. I am sure if we had a time machine and a little oil when TV’s came out the same argument was had.
We evolve. As do our needs. WiFi is not just about getting online. It’s social, it’s essential to some, it is today’s world, like it or not. We’ve come of age. Hotels need to patch up their thread bare carpets and, their wifi signals.
As always, and interesting post, Andy, but I have to disagree with you.
First off, you are right of course, nothing is free.
The ‘complimentary’ tea and coffee in your hotel room has been factored into the cost of the room. As has the linen and towels, the soap and ‘free’ shampoo and conditioner, hair dryer, air conditioning, television and yes, even the roll of toilet paper every traveler expects to find in the bathroom. So maybe the question should not be, “Should hotels provide access to the internet for free?” but “Should they factor internet access into the price of their rooms?”
I for one believe the answer should be yes. If we can save a couple of bucks by choosing not to use the internet, why not ask management to lower the cost of each room because we don’t want to watch television, or don’t need the sheets and towels changed daily? Maybe they could knock off another dollar or two by removing the hair dryer and clothes iron as well.
In an increasingly wired world, access to the internet should simply be part of the service. If I don’t want to use it, I won’t, just like a never use the hair dryer or the iron. However, I know these items have been factored into the price of the rooms I stay in (if they are in fact available), and accept them and the extra cost because from an organizational point of view it makes sense, since management don’t have to have staff removing items from rooms (because guests don’t need them), or running items around the hotel to rooms that do want these extras.
Interestingly, some of the cheapest hotels I have stayed in, provide ‘free’ internet access as part of their service. On the other hand the most expensive hotels seem to be the ones that charge – and charge plenty – for access.
Personally, I never stay in a hotel where WiFi is not included in the cost of the room, and in fact it is one of the first things I look for when researching my accommodations.
This is a slightly one sided argument though as us commenters are the kind of people who use the internet regularly. We’d feel cut off from the outside world without our beloved wifi.
On the other hand maybe a larger percentage of hotel guests don’t use the wifi, have a laptop, or care whether it’s free or not. You’ll be hard pushed to find them commenting on a blog though as they’re busy living their offline lives (the mad fools).
Just a thought.
Free WiFi isn’t a right, but for me I now consider it as equally important as location and price when booking a hotel. I travelled coast-to-coast across the US a month ago, stayed in seven different hotels and hostels, and the deciding factor in booking each was ultimately whether free WiFi was available. All things being equal, the hotel with the service wins my business.
As Matt points out, there are plenty of services wrapped up in the price of the room – I don’t particularly enjoy paying for every guest to have the luxury of a mini-bar, a swimming pool or even a TV because I don’t use them. Still, that’s what I’m paying for so I don’t think that argument holds any water.
And no, WiFi isn’t free, but then neither is it $14.95 a day. After the install and given the volume discounts, a hotel pays pennies for each connection. If hotel pricing was reasonable, instead of an attempt to claw back balance sheets of yore when in-room calls bumped up the profits, this wouldn’t be a discussion. I stayed in the recently opened Tunes budget hotel in South London, and I thought they had it spot on – the room cost £40, the WiFi cost £3 for 24 hours. That’s a fair and reasonable price that generates very decent profits for the hotel.
I agree WiFi isn’t a deal-breaker for everyone, but it’s becoming increasingly so. Hotels need to take a hard look at their guests and consider their needs not just now, but in two or three years time.
I have no trouble paying extra for internet access if the charge is reasonable. In the UK you can get a high speed (50MB) broadband connection for aound than $1 per day (http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband/compare-broadband-packages.html). So, there is no reason for a hotel to charge any more than that. However, I see charges of $1 for 15 minutes in hotels and airports, which is a complete rip-off, and pure profiteering, i.e. taking advantage of people desperate to access the internet when not at home.
So, to follow your budget airline analogy, a hotel could set it’s daily rates like them:
Room – $30
Extras:
Breakfast – $10
Coffee/Tea – $2
Internet – $2
Clean towels – $2
Room clean – $2 (do you really need your bed made and bin emptied every day?)
etc.
Thanks guys for starting the debate. I think it does boil down to what is considered an essential by most hotel guests. I would love to know the proportion of hotel guests who use internet access when it’s available (free or paid). Is it 60%? 80%? 40%? Similar figures to hotel porn take-up perhaps? I don’t know, but I’m sure it varies according to type of establishment.
As has been mentioned, it is actually the places at the low-cost end (esp. backpacker accommodation) where decent wi-fi is most in demand, and is most often offered free.
Should we have to pay for towels? Hair-dryers? Hot showers? The model of Tune hotels (Kash, I think you reviewed one of these recently) or Easy hotels is exactly this. You pay for the bed and anything else is extra. Maybe this type of property will see growth in these cash-strapped times.
Dave, I think we’re in agreement on most points. Hotels need to have a decent connection available. Not just a token gesture, but users need to get access quickly, reliably and with minimum fuss.
But for properties that offer a bed for the night for minimum cost (eg: Premier Inn/ Travelodge in UK) perhaps there is an argument to take the steps you mention. I reckon a clean bed and hot water are the two essentials (but that’s just my opinion and others will have different thoughts). Why not strip the room charge down to that and have an itemised bill for TV, towels (already done in some), tea/coffee etc. If you’re arriving in a room at 11pm and have to be out by 7am what else will you use? Airlines have made this change in pricing philosophy some years ago and I wonder if hotels will do the same in the future.
I am of course playing Devil’s Advocate here and welcome the debate, and I do think that us online folks can easily forget that there a whole world out there who still only use the internet for the bare essentials, if at all.
Paul, I also thought the Tune pricing model was a fair one – if the room is only £40 then I have no problem paying £3 for internet if I need it, while I’m happy to save the money if I don’t.
This is in contrast to those hotels who are seen to profiteer from interest charges. No-one can ever persuade me that anything over £10 (even $10) is an justifiable internet fee.
Andy, the bizarre thing is that on mainland Europe it is the budget hotels that offer WiFi in the room rate.
A great idea is the French WiFi model where fixed line broadband subscribers can set up their WiFi so that one secure connection is for the subscriber. A second WiFi connection is shared by other subscribers of the same internet provider. So if you are away from home there is a chance you can log on to these WiFi points. As you are a known subscriber, then it is also better for security issues, as they know exactly who is downloading the instructions on how to make a weapon of mass destruction, otherwise known as an e-book for monetising your travel blog.
I’m not a free wifi fundamentalist either. Accommodation providers can charge what they like for their various services. However, if someone tries to take the piss by charging £10 to £20 a day for internet access, then I’m far less likely to use them. That’s my choice, as it is the hotel’s choice to charge it.
I do think, however, that the whole Wifi thing is a good indication of a hotel’s attitude to its customers. Do they see things such as Wifi as a way of improving the experience or a way to squeeze more money out of the guests? I know which attitude I prefer – and it’s often reflected in the general service.
The cost of providing Wifi is about £1 a day. I know that, because it’s roughly what I pay at home. Paying up to £5 a day in a hotel is actually fairly reasonable. Beyond that, it’s blatant profiteering and treating the customer as if they’re retarded.
Great read! And I also agree with all the comments. We are entering 2011 and soon we will be expecting in-flight wifi to be free too. More and more of us live our lives online, especially while we travel. The fact of having wifi could well be the tie breaker for travelers booking hotels.
With all the geolocated mobile apps around (including eezeer
) it not only benefits the clients but have a huge potential in benefitting the hotels. With eezeer users get to review hotels on-the-spot and this gets featured in our site as well as twitter and the same goes for foursquare and gowalla. This means the hotels get their name out for free.
So yes it might not be the biggest USP yet but if all properties don’t start considering it now they will surely get left behind.
Free mini-bar AND wi-fi (including LAN cable)?
I do have to say there is ONLY one hotel in Singapore that does that and that would be the Royal Plaza on Scotts (and what a shocker, they’re active on Facebook AND Twitter as well). And it’s an independent hotel. As such it is not connected to any of those large worldwide hotel chains. And no, they don’t pay me for the free publicity and I don’t work for them either.
Their service puts to shame all those SGD$24+++ internet services in other major hotels here in Singapore which have gradually snuck in that nonsensical clause of ‘fair-go’ by killing the speed of the internet to ‘crawling’ when one exceeds a certain amount of data usage, despite paying for ‘unlimited’ access over the period of a day.
With budget hotels, it’s really odd to see everything pared to the minimum (including ever-shinking hotel room size and showers) and then being made to pay extra to ‘upgrade’ services. Why wouldn’t they just call them as hostels and leave it at that?
At least the expectations are not raised.
Well, I enjoyed reading this post, but I have to disagree. While in Jordan the cost of Wi-Fi in ALREADY expensive hotels was outrageous. And to top it off, it was a high cost for just a few minutes and bad connections. I actually needed to work and was unable. In fact, Queen Rania expected me to blog/video blog about my experience there…now how was that supposed to happen?
Sorry, where the world is advancing way too fast in technology to be paying for antiquated service.
Michael, you’re exposing the vast gulf between Asian service standards and the rest. At the place we stayed in Bangkok, we had free wi-fi, LAN cable and a complementary mini-bar – all from a 17th floor city view room. Luxurious extravagance? Yes, but still under $100. European (and N American) service has no will or capacity to ever rise up to these levels.
Great post!
I do not mind paying for internet access. If I pay and it sucks, I politely ask for a refund. Sometimes I am granted the refund. If not, I do not make a fuss but I make a note of it. I might not stay there again if any of my top priorities were also not so great. My priority is not internet access especially since I can get internet access at internet cafes or coffee houses even if I must pay. No matter if my aim is budget or 5-star my priorities include the following:
1. Safety. (often I am traveling alone)
2. People. (prefer friendly, helpful and caring people surrounding me; often the best are in the mid-range hotels)
3. Location. .
Interesting point, and I would agree whole-heartedly if, as Melvin mentioned, the additional fee for wi-fi was $1, €1 or the rough equivalent. Given that the vast majority of hotels already require an internet connection for their own work (and most of them probably have wireless for their own business purposes), the cost to add wireless accessibility for guests is negligible. I would have no problem subsidizing that cost with a small fee (and even $1 per internet-using guest is going to net a profit for the hotel in the long run), but most North American hotels charge between $7 and $15 – per day! That’s just ridiculous, and very poor customer service.
Can we start a list of places with free mini-bars and free wi-fi? Because any hotel with that combination sounds like a place I want to be!
I don’t think there are hotels in Estonia without free wifi. You are welcomed by free wifi as soon as you get to the airport. There is free wifi in shopping malls, hospitals, restaurants, ferries, buses. A basic human right in Estonia.
Not using it doesn’t save anyone money. The hotel isn’t charged by the amount of people using it and frankly it’s quite cheap. Wifi is no luxury, it’s a necessity. Like toilet paper. Every self-respecting institution should stack some of that.
I have noticed that the more expensive the hotel, the less likely you are to get free wi-fi.
In cheaper hotels and hostels wi-fi tends to be free. In higher end hotels you end up paying $10 to $20 a day. In my view any hotel charging for internet access is chasing dirty profits. It is like charging exorbitant rates for long distance calls or $6 minibar soft drinks.
How about surprising people in a way that creates value for a change? I stayed in a nicer resort hotel in Turkey recently that advertised no Internet access. We were surprised to find out that they indeed had it and it was free.
I have to agree with lots of others here, whether or not a hotel has free wifi does not determine the price of a room. First of all, free wifi is often not an extra cost for the hotel (unless we’re talking about really large hotels). They need internet anyway for example for reservations, so placing an extra 75$ wireless router won’t make the bill.
So I don’t think they calculate it in their price.
What happens ofcourse is that hotels with Wifi have more guests and are able to raise their price based on that. But then again this is the same for every other free service mentioned here (tv, towels, bed linen, hot water,…)
If I am staying in a beach hotel in the Caribbean, then I have no problem in paying a token payment to help towards the internet bill, but hotels that are in the middle of a business park or next to an airport that charge for wifi should be ashamed of themselves!
I have been a travel agent for the past 6 years and I cannot recall ever being asked by a client about free wifi – which tells me it is not of a very high importance for most leisure travellers.
Interesting post. Satellite internet is genuinely expensive, tough to supply and limited access, so I don’t have a problem paying for that.
With wifi, I think the main problem is that the margin the hotelier applies is pretty transparent, so paying (say) $10 per day when the service for the entire hotel costs less than that feels exploitative. It’s far cheaper, say, than running a pool, one which many guests may not use.
I also think it makes economic sense for many places to offer it free, on the same basis as restaurants offering it free: people come in and spend the money to use the service.
I think a fairer analogy might be with TV channels. You don’t expect to pay to watch TV, so I don’t see why one should pay, outside areas which need satellite connections, to use the wifi.
Ah, here’s where I break up with you. And we were getting along so well.
Wireless is a utility, like cable TV. Cable TV is included by default in almost every single hotel I’ve ever stayed in. (Currently wracking my brain to remember the last time I stayed in a hotel without cable TV. Got nothing.) I don’t turn on my hotel TV much, and yet, there it sits, in my room, connected to 157 channels of nonsense. And the hotel pays the bill for that and rolls the expense in to the cost of my room. Just like my rate goes no lower if I don’t happen to take a shower while I’m there. Maybe I use the coffee pot, maybe I don’t. Maybe I use the shampoo, maybe I don’t. Etc… Why am I being charged for it and not for the light in the bathroom? It’s being broadcast whether I’m online or not, right? Why am I paying for wifi and NOT for these other things? Because they’re part of the package. Why isn’t wifi part of that package?
I recently stayed at a Very Expensive Hotel, I mean WAY over the top. Ten bucks a day for wifi on an over 400/night room? You have GOT to be kidding me.
Take a peek at Todd Lucier’s video about wifi. “Why wouldn’t you want your customers to post a photo of themselves in your hotel on their FB page? Why would you charge them for that?”
http://www.tourismkeys.ca/blog/2010/12/are-your-guests-checking-in-this-week-in-tourism-video/
“The cost of providing Wifi is about £1 a day. I know that, because it’s roughly what I pay at home.” – What a completely absurd and moronic comment.
Do you have dedicated telephone line with unlimited business broadband and static ip address at home? Did you spent £2500 on equipment to wifi your “home” (and that is bare minimum for an average sized hotel)? Did it cost you a further £1500 to install your “home” wifi network? Is your “home” the same size as the average hotel? How many access points did you need to cover your “home” with a decent wifi signal? Does your “home” have 4ft thick walls? Did you have metres and metres of CAT5 cable to run throughout your “home” when the walls were too thick for wifi to penetrate? Does your “home” have adjacent buildings which are 30 metres away, that are part of your “home”? Do you require by law to obtain user details from friends who may want to access your “home” network? Do you have a server to authenticate users and monitor your “home” network? Do you have software to track user credentials on your “home” network? Do you employ staff to monitor and maintain your “home” network? – Thats your nonsensical analysis comparison blown completely out of the water.
“so placing an extra 75$ wireless router” – if you think a crappy $75 dollar router is going to provide a service that people will be happy with, you’re grossly mistaken. No wonder there are so many complaints about coverage if thats the equipment that cheapskate hoteliers install at their locations. Again, totally uneducated and misinformed comment.
“I have noticed that the more expensive the hotel, the less likely you are to get free wi-fi.” – thats because of installation costs, as more expensive hotels do not have paper thin walls, which means a lot more access points (and not crappy $75 ones).
“Given that the vast majority of hotels already require an internet connection for their own work (and most of them probably have wireless for their own business purposes), the cost to add wireless accessibility for guests is negligible” – You will find that the vast majority of these hotels do not want to share their business connections with every Tom, Dick & Harry who want to sit there hogging bandwidth all day (if it were free), therefore pay for a dedicated line for their guests. Unless you want to hang around the hotel office where their wifi router is situated, with your device, you will also find that a single wireless router will not cover the vast majority of hotels with a wifi signal in every room. Costs are negligible? How much does it cost for a hotel installation since you are obviously very knowledgeable in the subject?
“We are entering 2011 and soon we will be expecting in-flight wifi to be free too” – yeah just like your own home internet connection is free also. You can take the “we” out of that statement, not everyone lives in la-la land.
“Free wifi- its not a universal birth right but oneday it will be: we will live in a world without wires where anyone can access the internet from any corner of the world…” – Thats right and we will get free fuel, free telephone calls, free sky tv, free mobile calls, free food, free…… what a utopia that would be my friend. Unfortunately, its not on this planet called earth.
“Everything which is more than €1,- per day is too much! How high are the costs of the hotel per month? They should be fine with that rate! Most hotels don’t even offer good connections, so that they shouldn’t be even allowed to call themselves a hotel with WiFi.” – that will be the ones using the $75 wireless routers then. €1 euro a day? You can’t even buy 2 packs of crisps for that these days. Have you not heard of inflation? Get real.
For the record, I run a hotspot business and most of the comments regarding wifi are based on pure ignorance of what is involved and comparisons with their own “home” network where they no doubt got a “free” wireless router thrown in with the deal. Have you ever tried running a hotspot with free netgear? No? Well they don’t work, thats why, they will just not do the job. They are worlds apart and like comparing apples with oranges. I also, however, grudge and in fact will not use any hotspot that charges over £7 for 24 hours access.
The reason expensive hotels charge (around 25 euros or 25 pounds a day–half what I pay for monthly service) is because most of their customers are on a business expense acct and the cost is payed for by their company, no questions asked.
Perhaps those in charge of expense accounts should start questioning wifi costs, insisting their employees stay at hotels that offer it for free. Then we’ll see the fees magically disappear.
I am hotelier. I want say that i agree with all here. Every one speak from his side and this is the true. In a expensive hotel the WiFi is expensive, no because don’t pay the guest but his company but to keep high the hotel name, the brand name. In my hotel we have free WiFi but we don’t have high speed WiFi because we can’t pay it. If we will put this fee in the official rate, our guests will be unhappy because our prices will be expensive and of course don’t use WiFi all our customers. So we try find “the gold solusion” as we say in Greece. Free WiFi for all but no high speed.
You can work little slowly (of course we are resort hotel and our guests usually are in holidays).