Should wireless Internet access be free at hotels? A vast majority of guests think so, and now a UK-based blogger is ratcheting up the pressure on hotels to free their Wi-Fi signals once and for all.
Rajul Chande, the editor of LondonHotelsInsight.com, yesterday published an open letter to hotels, demanding they no longer charge for their wireless access points. It seems to be gaining some traction online.
Chande lists eight reasons for freeing Wi-Fi. He argues that wireless access is a basic utility and that charging for it angers guests and devalues a hotel brand.
What’s more, Chande argues, influential social media types will go out of their way to avoid a property that charges for Internet access.
If your hotel charges for WiFi, the news will spread rapidly. Moreover, the profile of people who use hotel WiFi is similar to those who write online reviews on sites like TripAdvisor.
By charging for WiFi, your hotel is alienating the world’s most influential online community.
Asking guests to pay for wireless Internet access is denying the future, too.
You cannot reverse a technology trend (the growing use of internet-connected devices) nor can you swim against an irresistible consumer tide.
I’m convinced that universal free hotel WiFi is inevitable and it’s only a question of “when”. Do you want to be the last hotel left standing, letting your competitors reap all the benefits to the detriment of your reputation?
So is it time to join the “Free Wi-Fi” campaign? Yes. Then again, it was time two years ago, when I declared that wireless access was a basic right for hotel guests.
We all know that the cost of providing wireless access has very little to do with what we’re charged as hotel guests. Why else would a full-service property bill you $9.95 for a day of Internet access, but the budget motel offer the signal for free?
This has everything to do with a hotel wanting to help itself to more of your money, the way it did with phones in the 80s and early 90s, before guests got smart and started to use their cell phones.
I’ve spoken with hotel revenue managers about this issue. They don’t want to give up the money. They know it’s the right thing to do, but they just can’t bring themselves to doing it.
Maybe this campaign will persuade them to change their minds.
(Photo: slambo_42/Flickr Creative Commons)
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I agree. I don’t understand how a budget hotel has free wifi but the nice hotels do not. I recently went to a department offsite meeting at a Hyatt (couple hundred employees attended) which had a conference center. The wifi was not free and our company brought in its own wireless equipment to broadcast its own signal at the conference center.
The lodging operators should pay attention to this.
I recently booked lodging in Boca Raton. My first choice was an Embassy Suites, until I determined that it would cost another $10 a day for internet access. I subsequently made reservations at a nearby Residence Inn that included internet access as part of the room rate. Plus the Residence Inn rate was 20% less than the non-internet-included rate at this particular Embassy Suites.
I think that hotels should know that they lose a full star or better in my mind when they have the nerve to charge money for Internet access in this day and age. You simply cannot be regarded as a four- or five-star property if you’re stooping to this low. It’s like dating a physically beautiful woman who loads her purse with restaurant “freebies” off of the table. Just plain cheap and therefore ultimately unattractive.
I am a “road-warroir”, traveling about 75 – 80%. I will go out of my way to avoid paying for internet access. I will stay further away from my choice location to get free acess.
Now with Hamptons instead of Hiltons and Holiday Inn Express instead of Crowne Plaza / Interncontinental where sometimes the rates for the rooms are close, with the free internet access AND free breakfasts, as a business traveler how can I NOT stay at those properties?
My husband and I now regularly inquire about WiFi access before we book, and use free WiFi as the determining factor in booking a hotel. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the many unprepossessing hotels that have excellent customer service IN ADDITION to free WiFi–caring for the customer must be a principle with them, and one we want to encourage by giving them our business. Speak up: When a hotel wants to add a charge for WiFi, just say NO and go elsewhere, telling them exactly why you decline to book with them.
Leave it up to the market and the hotels to decide. It is very rare for me to stay at a hotel that doesn’t offer free WiFi. If the management of these hotels that charges for WiFi doesn’t see that they are losing customers than it is their loss.
Japanese hotels seem to get it. Having recently shopped for hotels in Tokyo and Kyoto I was pleasantly surprised to see that the majority had free internet access.
However, they didn’t have wireless modems. I had to plug in. But, so what, it was free…as it should be.
It never ceases to amaze me the levels the ‘big guys’ stoop to in order to make that extra few dollars. I understand the convenience factor in some situations, but come on. Help your guests so that they want to come back!