Hotels- put free WiFi in the rooms
I am in downtown San Francisco and one of the first things I tried to do when I got here was get connected to the web in the hotel. That’s the life of a tech blogger, Internet first, everything else second. I was immediately confronted with a scenario all too common for frequent travelers, the lack of free hotel connectivity. In this day and age I can’t understand why hotels, especially big chains, don’t realize that good solid connectivity is an important feature for business travelers. There are still many hotels believe it or not that don’t have connectivity available at all and many that do provide it don’t get it.
The hotel where I am now is a big hotel full of business folk and it’s common to see laptops all over the lobby and in the various venues onsite. That’s because they still charge $14.95 per day for in-room Internet and as I quickly discovered that may not get you very much. Since it’s a legitimate business expense I tapped into the wired ethernet in the room, approving the daily charge and jumping online to get some work done. What I experienced is very spotty bandwidth ranging from reasonable to downright poky all too often. I checked the bandwidth at one point and was pretty annoyed by what I saw- 346 kbps down and 150 kbps up. This is barely better than the days of dialup and certainly not acceptable for $15 a day. This is not that unusual a case, I have seen this many times in different hotels who contract out the connectivity and then forget about it.
This hotel is not unusual in that while the room connectivity is spotty and expensive, they have free WiFi in many of the common areas like the lobby and restaurants. So there’s just no reason why they can’t go ahead and blanket the rooms with the same coverage. Sure it will cost them some money but in the long run they’ll have happy business travelers returning every chance they get. I’ve heard many road warrriors state that connectivity is the primary criteria they use for choosing a hotel. It’s just good business. Solid connectivity is now a requirement for many business travelers and should be treated as such by the big hotels.
On a plus note I’ve determined that Union Square is blanketed with free WiFi which is very cool. It’s a strong signal that shows full strength even outside the park and that’s nice indeed.
UPDATE: This morning I was surprised to see a guest rooms WiFi network appear in the list in Windows. This was not here last night and while it’s great that the rooms here do now have free WiFi (I assume it’s free) my premise still holds that this is not always the case. There is no literature in the room that even mentions wireless connectivity so they certainly are not trying to sell it.
I may not be a full time tech blogger like you but I always call the hotel to check on connectivity before I book the room through Expedia et al…
Scotty, I do too but sometimes you’re stuck with what’s available for your trip.
You’ve hit on one of my biggest bug-bears as a traveller and, on a recent trip, something that infuriated me.
I recently travelled to Stockholm, Sweden and the only rooms available were in the Sheraton Hotel… at 380 US Dollars per night! Not only was breakfast not included… but wi-fi wasn’t either!!! Internet access was a $30 per night extra!
After checking in and freaking out at the charge of the net access… we went out into the city for a meal. We stopped at a small restaurant where, after checking my iPod Touch for some reason… I noticed they had a free wi-fi network. So, my 380 bucks hotel room didn’t provide net access… but my 10 bucks bowl of pasta did.
That just ain’t right.
Oh if only all hotels offered free wifi. The only place I’ve found that free wifi is almost standard is in the south of France. Everywhere else I’ve been you have to pay varying extortionate rates.
I’ve noticed that free wi-fi tends to be pretty standard at lower-end motels (Holiday Inn Express, in particular, promotes it pretty heavily), while connectivity is almost always extra-charge at higher end hotels. I suspect this is because they assume that most business travelers will just expense the charge and, thus, won’t really care about it. Free connectivity is probably much more of a selling point for venues that are more family-oriented.
One thing that I was a bit surprised to discover earlier this summer was that the Disney-owned hotels at Disneyland all are blanketed with free wi-fi both in the rooms and the common areas. Disney usually charges for pretty much anything they can get away with, so I suspect that they have found that the types of travelers that stay there probably just aren’t all that willing to pay for network connectivity.
Hi James,
I too am coming to SF today for Mobilize. I’m wondering – is there going to be any kind of meet up or anything tonight? It’d be great to meet you as I’ve been a reader for a very long time.
E-mail me if there’s anything happening.
-Jason
Do you prefer to buy the hotel internet access even with your Verizon EVDO available? Your previous post about using the Verizon in the airport seemed like it was just as good; or is there no signal in the hotel?
High speed access will almost always beat out EVDO although I was quite happy last night using it. EVDO is now getting very fast but it does depend on the signal strength of your location, and you don’t know that until you get there.
I saw this similar problem at a recent hotel stay in Philadelphia. For the most part, the connection worked OK, but every so often, the connection would slow to a crawl or nearly stopped for some time. I ended up using the wired connection instead, which provided a little bit better experience, but the connection was still very unreliable. This was for paid wifi and ethernet.
On a business trip, my employer pays for the room and related expenses. Hotels that cater to this clientele, of course, know that.
Does your employer not allow you to expense internet access if it’s used for business purposes? If so, I’d start looking for a new employer
The business hotels I stay in tend not to be too bad. It’s when I stay overnight with my family that I have problems. The hotel will always advertise “free wireless internet”, but it never works. Either there is no network, or I can pick up the network but it doesn’t go anywhere. The teenage girl at the counter always says “I don’t know anything about computers!” when I try to complain or ask to have it fixed.
I’ve found that the more expensive hotels seem to nickle and dime more. I stayed at the Renaissance in Boston one night. My rate was $186, and they wanted to charge for wi-fi. I ended up just catching up on Google Reader over AT&T’s EDGE on my Pocket PC. Since then, my company has issued me a BlackBerry with a 5 GB limit on tethering, but that has come in handy a few times.
Internet access is very important for business travel. I couldn’t get by without it.
the most I have ever paid was 35Euro, about 50$ at the time. TOTALLY crazy, TOTAL ripoff, TOTALLY expensive hotel. I REALLY gave the front desk an earfull.
they sent up a bottle of champagne
I recently stayed at a hotel where I paid iirc 10 pounds/five nights for in-room wifi. The speed sucked, to put it mildly. Then on my next stop, the wifi in the hotel was super-speedy, but only in the lobby, and the wired Internet in the rooms was also super-speedy. Both were free. I was wishing I had packed my travel router in the last one, though.
I’d like to see free Internet in all airports. In a hotel room I at least have alternative things to do such as watching TV or leaving my room to enjoy the city I’m in. There isn’t much to do in an airport & almost no one travels without a laptop these days.
The Harbor Court hotel on Steurart Street has free Wi-Fi & a free cocktail hour!
I thought I would respond to this from the hotel perspective of things. My situation is unique since I’m in the wilds of Yukon, Canada, but from what I know, most hotels are older buildings. It’s been a pain to install wireless networks into our two hotels, and since we don’t have an IT department, it gets expensive too to pay another company to do it.
The other danger for hotels is bandwidth usage. Cafes can get away offering free net usage because most people are there only for a coffee or two. Hotels have to worry about 100+ internet connections leeching overnight on bit torrent. On a poorly designed network, those costs can sky rocket.
It’s not enough to tell hotels to install wireless networks because they’ll try to throw some consumer model wireless routers up to say “we have wireless internet”. Rather, the tech community should go help these hotels create the networks cheaply, securely, and put in safe-guards to help protect them from bandwidth pirates.
I guess I dont see the value in buying hotel wifi.. I use my verizon aircard and as much as I travel I would spend more on the motel wifi than i do on my aircard service each month. For 99.9% of what I do it is more than fast enough. And I dont have to screw with the weird speed changes and web logins that many hotels have.. too much trouble for very little gain.
I work in a quality inn. yes it’s a problem. first we have to understand that most individual motel are independently and locally owned. there is often an extreme resistance to add amenities unless the national brand requires it or area competition mandates it. then in some cases there is a generational gap in that older folks tend to change more slowly. ten years ago internet access was not so important. then there are support problems. guests are going to automatically assume that the low paid 8to 9 dollar an hour front desk clerk be a computer expert along with being a travel agent a secretary a weatherman a bellhop security a bookkeeper–a WiFi trouble shooter. maintenancecancan’t fix it when it breaks. our local hotel here I’m proud to say has WiFi. there are several rooms that are blacked because routers just got old. 2 years old and the motel has to have everything redone because the tech we purchased before is obsolete. and let’s face it small family owned businesses in this economy are cutting back. also realize that small businesses are quicker to change than the corporate models. its all singing to the choir to me. WiFi is more important to many of us than TV. at the quality inn where I work we are tag having it done–yes and finally lids for the coffee in the lobby too.
One thing I’ve found as well on HSDPA is that the speed can be significantsly affected by your location and likely number of other users. I work sometimes in our office in Edinburgh and the network is pretty zippy but slows to a crawl between 12 and 2pm, I assume when there’a a lot of people doing some social surfing on their lunchbreak.
In another office, which is a bit more remote and in a less densely populated area, I get superb responsiveness and surfing speeds all day long.
It’s also possible that some masked do-gooder has hooked up their personal router to their paid-for room internet connection to provide some personal or public wifi access. If it wasn’t explicitly stated by the hotel desk, I might be a little cautious about using such access points. They could also be honeypots setup by unscrupulous hotel guests, which could be used for anything from simply tallying how many people would blindly connect to an open wifi spot to network and password sniffing.
oh yes and if it needs to be said at our local motel it’s FREE WiFi FREE coffee free lids. despite the extra cost to motels I think charging an additional fee is unreasonable. that’s my opinion. my point is to be nice to your front desk people and that those hotels that offer free WiFi –it’s not as easy to offer as some might think. the good motels want your business and are trying very hard to get it.
as far as wireless security–get real. I don’t know about how it is elsewhere but we are talking wireless OPEN hotspots in most hotels I’ve been to that are at best password protected through the browser. often there is a wlan hard line in the lobby which is better, but still. an open hotspot whether in a coffee shop or motel is never ’secure’.
Hi!
Just a comment about FREE wifi in hotels south of France.
As a consequence of a 2006 antiterrorism law that passed in France, all hotspots, including hotels, have to file the wifi clients and keep the connexion logs for two years. The cost of the hardware and software ranges from 1500 and 3000 USD.
Those who offer the wifi for free are certainly not law abiding hotels!
To whomever commented that Disney knows the value of keeping people happy so they provide free wifi(although they charge for everything else)…. WRONG! Maybe in DisneyLAND, but in DisneyWORLD, there was no connectivity at all! Not even a pay per night connection. I had to tether up the bb for the entire week. For what you pay there, they should provide you with the connection and a loaner thinkpad for your time there!