HotelChatter

This practice is simply egregious and must end soon.  If these chains can afford to keep their mid- and lower-priced properties free of wi-fi charges, how can they continue to pretend to justify these charges at the higher price point, especially to a resentful clientele that simply put, knows better?

I have been inthe industry, technology for Hotels, for over 10 years and I think your continuous drive for free wifi is over simplified.

One has to understand the cost of providing free wifi, and how this has sky rocketed over the past years and will only grow at an even faster pace. the cost of bandwidth is there and will not go away, it will just grow.

The only way to provide free wifi in a hotel is to provide a tiered solution with free at an acceptable speed (probably ends up to be same as what you have right now when about 40% goes off the continuous saturated pipe hotels have right now) and paid for those who want fast access to stream etc.

To do that you need a managed solution like many of the service providers provide these days. To not do that is ignoring the travellers demand for bandwidth and not satisfying those who want speed instead of saving a few dollars and that is about 30% from statistics up from 5% 2 years ago

Dear Hotel Chatter Crew,

I am a regular Traveller and have to say, that Free Wifi is nice to have, but at what Speeds?

I rather pay for a decent Service than have to deal with slow Speed Internet...

Living in different Countries has also shown how different Prices are for Internet.

I guess, you expect Broadband to be as fast as home - but how fast is that?

4Mbit down 512kbit up
or
do you have actually Fibre to the House via FIOS, Userve or equal with mindblowing 50Mbit and more?

Coming back to the Cost of Bandwidth.
In Germany you can now get a VDSL Line with "up to" 50Mbit down & 10Mbit up for less than $69 per month.

In London I am paying for a similar Service with Fibre to the Cabinet $71 plus I am lucky that I live in the right district of London my Colleague who lives 500m down the road is not in the right Area. He gets less than 10Mbit out of his ADSL Line.

Now have a look to South Korea or Japan, where they loudly talk about 1Gigabit Connections now and have 100Mbit to the Homes for several years and giggle about us when we get excited about 50Mbit Connections.

All I am saying is, Internet cost Money -
in some Areas more than in others.

And it has always cost extra for a better "Something".

Mercedes vs. Corolla
TagHeuer vs. Swatch
Mandarin vs. BestWestern

or Valet Parking than doing it yourself.
the Dry Cleaner at home than doing it yourself.

So if you want hassle free Top-notch Internet - PAY FOR IT!

Free wifi is a real draw card these days, as everyone has iphone/android/ipad/laptop, and when these are available people post to facebook etc, on how great the place they are staying is. People like to brag about their holidays. Even low price wifi is good, but the price you are saying is a bit much really. Riverland accommodation