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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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,…)

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.

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!