HotelChatter

Tags: WiFi Hell / Loews Hotels / Hungary Hotels / International Hotel WiFi / → All Tags

How Much Longer Can Hotels Charge for WiFi?

Earlier this week we popped into an Atlanta Bread Company outlet for a quick lunch in Nashville, TN. The staff greeting was warm, the food was tasty, and signs prominently pointed out a nice feature: free WiFi.

Three people were pecking away on their laptops and the one sitting closest to us was staying at the nearby Loews Vanderbilt Plaza. "Here I buy a $7 lunch and check e-mail for free," the chatty business traveler noted. "If I log in at my hotel, where I'm already paying $230 a night to rent a room, they want me to cough up another $10 plus tax. It's insane."

Which brings us to this pair of screenshots we grabbed while staying at the Danubius Hotel Astoria in Budapest, Hungary. Here they actually rub it in your face that you have to pay more for the exact same service when you are at a fancier hotel.

It's about $23 for 24 hours if you're in one of their 3- or 4-star hotels--already a princely sum--but a jaw-dropping $45 if you staying in a 5-star hotel instead. For the exact same connection through the exact same 3rd-party service. That's a lot of goulash!

more ›