

Hotel Wi-Fi – Relatively cheap free publicity - edward
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2015/02/hotel-wi-fi

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rm999
>IN YEARS to come we will look back at hotels that charged for Wi-Fi with a
kind of incredulous nostalgia. But how far in the future will that be?

I think more importantly, most people will stop caring if hotels provide wifi.
I already rarely connect to free wifi because I have a cellphone - when I use
my laptop I can just tether.

The two main blockers for most people (at least Americans) are cell providers
who charge insane rates for tethering and international roaming. Tmobile has
revealed that it's possible to provide both at a reasonable rate ("T-Mobile
CEO John Legere has estimated that profit margins on international roaming
fees can be about 90 percent"), so the current situation is just an
inefficiency that will eventually die off.

To me, we should still encourage hotels to do the right (modern) thing. But we
really should be pushing our cell providers to remove the inefficiencies that
prevent us from using our connections conveniently.

~~~
Mahn
> I think more importantly, most people will stop caring if hotels provide
> wifi.

I will stop caring once international roaming fees stops being a thing. I hope
that like you mention it eventually dies off, but right now, I have to assume
I'll be offline every time I travel abroad.

~~~
chatmasta
It makes far more sense to simply buy an international SIM card upon arrival.
In Thailand for example you can get seven days unlimited 3G (faster than in
the usa) for just $5 at 7/11\. Now that carriers must unlock phones you can do
this far more easily.

The downside is you get a new phone number. If you travel frequently it might
make sense to abandon calling altogether and simply setup an SIP forwarding
solution.

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dworin
Charging for hotel wifi is about price discrimination. The only people willing
to pay $25/day for in-room wifi are business travelers who aren't paying for
it themselves anyways.

That's why you're more likely to pay for wifi at a business hotel
(Marriott/Hilton) than you are at a tourist hotel. It's also why you're more
likely to pay for it at a more expensive hotel than a less expensive hotel.

Frequent business travelers care a lot more about reward stays than they do
about free wifi (because they're not paying for it, and because the loyalty
program will give it to them for free).

The article reads more like a press release for a social media agency (which
is who they quote in most of the article) than it does an actual analysis of
why hotels charge for Wifi.

~~~
astrocat
I've also heard that there's service-quality expectations at play: if the wifi
is free and it sucks, you're still happy while the hotels that charge for wifi
to simply reduce demand (congestion) in order to have a better experience
(speed/bandwidth) for those who actually pay.

And it's further complicated by the value of ppv entertainment to the hotel -
if Netflix/Hulu/whatever works just fine on the hotel wifi, the hotel is
losing revenue. Cheap hotels with crapy free internet don't have to worry
about that, but hotels that charge are also trying to recoup lost ppv
entertainment revenue.

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PaulHoule
It is one of those funny things that if you stay at a cheap hotel you get free
WiFi but you always get charged extra for it at an expensive hotel.

~~~
bluedino
It seems like there's always a Starbucks next door to the hotel or across the
street so I just go use theirs.

~~~
eridal
I hate when cafes set their DHCP lease to 24-hours or so.. nobody is in the
shop and you can't get an IP address..

I usually ask them to reboot their router, proceed to log into the admin panel
with device's default user/pass (which works most of the time), and set some
sane 30min lease.

it's a free public service.

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petercooper
I think a lot of e-commerce sites have figured out the same thing with free
delivery. I don't know why but I feel it myself as a customer.. if I pay the
price I see and don't end up having all extra charges tacked on at the end,
I'm more likely to hit Buy than try and search for the same item on Amazon or
wherever.

FWIW, as someone who works online and is a YouTube junkie, I would happily pay
for Internet at a hotel _if it were actually good._ It's a _very_ rare
occasion I can get a good connection and don't end up using my 3G instead.
Merely getting the equivalent of a regular DSL connection would make me
happily stump up a good $10-20 but it's NEVER that good.

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raisedbyninjas
>A study by Resonance, a tourism consulting firm, found that travellers worth
more than $1m say that free Wi-Fi is the amenity they value most when choosing
a destination

IME many wealthy people don't mind paying a premium but don't want to be
inconvenienced. The point of staying at a luxury hotel is to be catered to and
pay a lump sum at the end of your stay. Jumping through hoops to get past the
payment portal on each device your group is carrying is annoying.

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grandalf
I recently stayed at a Starwood property and the wifi fee was approaching 10%
of the overall price of the stay.

I would not have needed it but the t-mobile network coverage was very poor
inside the hotel.

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probablyfiction
I don't understand what it is that makes companies so short-sighted. They're
so focused on the immediate cost of something that they forget the long-term
value they reap from customers that keep coming back. Companies need to take
the long view rather than squeezing customers for every penny they can.

~~~
Jolijn
Perhaps they know more than we do. Perhaps it's mostly business guests that
are likely to return, and they don't pay for WIFI themselves. Possibly
tourists are more sensitive to price and more likely to book with the
competition if the room costs $2 more.

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mwexler
WSJ also has an article about this phenomenon with some more details around
how each chain approaches the issue; worth a read if you travel...
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/pay-for-wi-fi-only-at-a-
luxury-h...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/pay-for-wi-fi-only-at-a-luxury-
hotel-1424304981) including mention of www.hotelwifitest.com to share wifi
quality (or lack thereof) data.

------
kokey
> IN YEARS to come we will look back at hotels that charged for Wi-Fi with a
> kind of incredulous nostalgia. But how far in the future will that be?

then

> Subscribe now for full access or register to continue reading.

I'm feeling a bit of a knotted irony here.

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dazzla
Although irrelevant now don't hotels still charge crazy amounts for the in
room phone?

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logfromblammo
As network access becomes more ubiquitous for the residential market, charging
for that access at a hotel will look increasingly like charging a separate fee
for the water or electricity to be turned on in the room.

People expect most of the normal comforts of their own home when visiting a
hotel. Any place that fails to deliver without also charging extra nickel-and-
dime fees for those comforts will rightly get negative reviews.

Imagine if your final bill included charges like this:

\- Toilet Flush fee: 4 x $1.99

\- Elevator Use fee: 10 x $0.99

\- Room Electricity fee: 318.2 kWh x $0.49

\- Linens Rental fee: 1 x $9.99

\- Television Watching fee: 3 h x $1.99

\- Tiny Soaps and Shampoo Bottles: 5 x $1.99

\- Wi-Fi Access fee: 1 x $9.99

It fits right in, doesn't it?

~~~
cbhl
TBH, I'd be okay with that if the prices were reasonable and the base room fee
was adjusted accordingly.

Hotel Wi-Fi is annoying, slow, AND expensive.

