Now THIS is what I call civilization
Posted on September 19th, 2007 by Jackie Danicki
hotel sculpture
Originally uploaded by dynamist.
My hotel - for tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday, anyway; going to this one for the weekend - has free wifi for guests! This is so much more rare than it should be, especially amongst upscale hotels (where, of all places, it should be free).
There are also free apples, which I am eating without the usual shame (something about openly consuming free food feels so tacky to me). Something about suffering the tediousness of airports and security theater just makes me insouciant as all get-out. It’s a wonder I still have my shoes and socks on.
Wifi does mean that I have no excuse not to work, though. So back to that.
Filed under: Life
I am going to disagree with you on the expectation of free wifi in upscale hotels, and the reason is that overall price is less of a factor in choosing an upscale as opposed to a mid-level.
Examples of this trend are Holiday Inn & HI Express in Intercontinental’s portfolio and Courtyard & Fairfield Inn within Marriot’s. While these four chains have made free wi-fi a standard across North American properties, you will be asked to pay a fee for wi-fi at one of their flagship Intercontinental Hotels or Marriott Inn/Resorts.
There are many more rooms competing at the mid level versus the upscale. While all hotel rooms are perishables, there is much more pressure to sell mid scale based on a total rooms within the segment. Standards of expectations of the various brands entice. If a brand doesn’t offer it for free or offer it at all, a price conscious customer will tend towards the brand the does.
However, if you have to pay a premium for wifi access, you have a higher expectation that it will work. If it is critical, price seems less a factor.
WiFi is the second most important thing for me in a hotel, after a bed. The trouble with expensive hotels is that too many travellers are having their expenses paid for by employers, and those ones will pay for WiFi pretty much regardless of the cost. So hotels know they can make money from these customers, and charge for it. At some point they will realise how it pisses off their other customers, and change their policy, but it will take a while. It is very hard for any company to give up existing revenues, however much it is explained to them that they are damaging their business.
If smaller and cheaper hotels have WiFi, I find it is much more likely to be free. These days they quite often do, too, sometimes when they don’t advertise it. (I stayed in a nice little B&B in Cardiff, which had WiFi even though the middle aged landlady was barely aware of it. (She had a nerdy son who had set it up). I tried to explain to her that if she would put a sign ouside saying “Free WiFi” it would undoubtedly increase her business considerably (and would probably allow her to increase her rates, too), but I am not sure she got it.
Even our dentist has free wifi now, and he’s out in the country 15 minutes from Austin. It’s not that hard to do! What is wrong with people. Honestly.
I am now making hotel selections based on free wifi… it’s that big of a deal when you travel these days. I do agree with Michael that a good bed is priority #1.
I totally agree with you on expensive hotels lacking free wifi. That has very much been my experience as well. I’m a bit more picky than Michael in that I want my hotel to have free wifi and a gym or an agreement with a gym, not too fussy about the bed, and that’s tricky. Whenever I’m in England the choice is usually btwn cheap but decent hotels with free wifi and no gym, or hotels, like the one I’m staying in now, with a gym and and very expensive internet connection (not even wifi, but cable), which stinks. And I’d rather pay extra for drop-in at a gym the hotel has an agreement with, as hotel gyms usually are crap, than the other way around: free gym and pay for internet.