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HotelChatter's Annual Hotel Wi-Fi Report 2010
Ant writes with this excerpt from an annual review of wireless access for hotel guests: "This year marks HotelChatter's sixth annual hotel Wi-Fi report. Over the years we've documented the progression of hotel Wi-Fi, from blatant disregard, to price-gouging for Wi-Fi access, and reliable Wi-Fi for loyalty program members, through guests taking matters into their own hands with wireless laptop/notebook cards and 3G access. A year ago, we thought guest demand for free, reliable, hotel Wi-Fi might just go away, thanks to 3G, but today, a growing number of hotel guests not only demand the hotel they book have proper wireless access, but most will consider not staying at a hotel that can't meet their basic access needs. That's right, Wi-Fi is a make or break amenity for many hotel guests that can sway booking decisions — and that isn't going away."
Went to Disney this year. Not only did Buena Vista Suites charge $10 a day for wifi, the speeds were only 1 megabit down (~150 kBps) while my 3G iPhone offered a bit over 2 megabit.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I stayed at a Hilton recently, and they wanted something like $16 PER DAY for WiFi access in the room. I could almost stay at Motel 6 for that, WITH free WiFi there. It's because they're aimed at business travelers, who don't care what the bill to their company is. I won't stay at a Hilton again, if I have a choice.
You expected people in a hotel to use 3g? Wouldn't there be a serious roaming charge? assuming most people there are travelling from someplace else.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I find it ironic and more than a little insulting when certain hotels (ones that typically charge high room rates) try to gouge an insane amount of money for wifi from travellers when free wifi is all but the nearest coffee shop away. Why do these places, many of which cultivate an air of "our service separates us from the other rabble", treat their customers with such contempt when it comes to wifi? One would think they would do anything to keep what business they have and actively work to get more customers (especially when just about every small mom and pop B&B has free wifi!).
ps. Hyatt Regency Vancouver, I'm looking at you! (benefit of the doubt: that was a couple of years ago)
The most expensive hotels, are the ones most likely to have for-pay wifi. At rates of like $10-$15 an order of magnitude more expensive then a wireless or landline connection for your house. Does anyone know a good pre-pade type 3G data provider?
A lot will still offer free wifi in the lobby.
This pretty graphic is a nice summation of the article and can be used as a cheat sheet.
I have no documentation of this, but there's always been speculation in my company that the classier hotels don't give internet for free because either a) their clients will pay or b) the business that is paying for the room will pay. This is evidence of the observations but not the causation.
The funny thing I've noticed is, the cheap motels (Motel 6, Super 8, Econolodge) pretty much all offer decent WiFi for no additional charge - even the little mom-and-pop motels are offering free WiFi.
On the other hand, the big boys - the Sheraton's, the Hiltons, etc. - that I've stayed in all either a) have no WiFi at all, just wired Ethernet into a DSL-like system running on POTS cat-3 wiring (and often only for pay) or b) have WiFi but charge you for it.
It seems to me the places where you are staying on Other People's Money (places that cater to business travelers who expense the trip) are gouging on WiFi, the places where you are staying on your own dime all recognize WiFi as a competitive point.
I know that when I am traveling on my own money - you don't have free WiFi, I don't stay with you if I have a choice, and I almost ALWAYS have a choice.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I don't much care about wifi. I bring an airport express with me... But I refuse to pay for internet connectivity in any hotel. period. I once stayed at the BirgerJarl in Stockholm and was checking my IP address and lo-behold, I was handed an IPv6 address! Next time I went through the lobby, I mentioned how impressed I was to a lady at the counter and she replied that if I liked, she could give me an IPv4 address instead and to just let her know ...
FTA:
http://www.hotelchatter.com/special/2010-WiFi-Chart
Edward Tufte would call this a classic Duck - lots of color & graphical shapes, but redundant and confusing display of data.
See also Tufte's reference to the Big Duck:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Duck
I can't be the only one who doesn't want to pay for an expensive 3G data plan with the ability to tether (or worse, a data-only card). The vast majority of the time I want to use the internet I'm around wifi connections (home, work, coffee shops, etc).
I like to travel, but it hardly seems worth getting 3G internet access for the fraction of a year I'm on the road. So I certainly look for internet access in hotels. Though you have to be smart about it - we found an awesome hotel in London for a lot cheaper than most places of its class, but internet access was a daily charge. That charge simply meant we paid for access for one day instead of the three days we were there, and all was fine (we saved a few hundred bucks relative to its closest competition). Hotel prices can vary so much that ponying up for a $15/day internet access charge can still make sense (or just finding a local coffee shop). $2-4 is a small price to pay for internet access and a coffee for a while.
If I spent more time in airports, though, I might be inclined to get 3G access. So many airports I've been in have no free access anywhere near my gate. It hardly seems worth paying for a few hours though. I just make sure I have enough to keep myself occupied offline (and try to find a plug for my laptop, which is not at all easy in some airports).
So yeah, I'll stick with my prepaid phone service (averaging about $20/mo in calls and texts) and seek out wifi when I travel. Now, if my income doubled...
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I recently stayed in a Marriott that charged $12.95 a day (noon-to-noon) for Internet and long distance calling. I took my Pre, fired up Mobile Hotspot and went 'FU' to the hotel. In these days of free ubiquitous Internet, it is offensive that any place charges for Internet access, whether it be wired or wireless.
..but still expect to be able to log in. I can almost sort of live without internet access, but not really. But a 3g subscription is out of my my league by a long shot, especially seeing as I'm the new lower-middle class. I code like a small farmer, enough to get by but not stacking chips. I rarely go anywhere much and every place I'd stay for any length of time would has wifi anyway. Hard to justify a 3g modem. More and more people stay in one place (or a half dozen places) that have wifi anyway now that their friends have wifi and can hand you a password right off the bat if you need it, yet somehow would like net on the road without parking outside McD.
I don't know if this has been anybody else's experiance but I've stayed at a couple of hotels ... many had free wifi, but two stand out in my mind as having claimed to have "free wifi" but then when you associated to their access point you couldn't get an IP address. At first I thought "maybe it's because I'm using linux" ... because two friends who were staying with me were able to connect with their iPhones ... but on another trip both my dad and brother were unable to connect with their respectively Windows XP laptop, Macbook. So it seems like there's a whole lot of hotel wifi APs that are setup in a totally screwed up manor. Or maybe I've just had bad luck
But after 3 months in Australia and 3 months in NZ only had free hotel wifi a total of three times.
Any clues antipodeans?
Anyone can give away free wifi, but how do you know it's not capturing everything you do? Or someone else has replaced the "free" wifi spot with his own, made to look like the free one? No one may know if it's free since no one is managing it. If you want at least some assurance that you aren't really going through Vito's wifi honeypot scam box, then pay a little more and rest peacefully.
Who do you think IS managing free wifi HOTSPOTS? I can tell you it's not who you think it is. It's Vito, and his PAL, Igor. They will do it because they can scam you. Motel 6 won't care, not about the roaches and bedbugs and mice and xtal meth labs to the left and right, and not about who is doing what on "their" wifi.
Hotels, in general, are for suckers in my opinion. If you're planning a trip, go to www.couchsurfing.org, make yourself a profile, meet some cool people while you travel, stay in the area for relatively cheap and/or free, and chances are, your host will be able to provide internet that you don't have to pay for. Of course, for business trips and the like, that kind of thing may not work out. However, I've often found that corporate overlords dictate hotel choices when flying for business anyways so its not like you get to make the choice based on internet or any other thing that you value.
Also, hostels are awesome. We should open some more of those in the States.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I stayed at the Breakwater Lodge in Cape Town, SA. They were charging ~$10/hour.
No, because a) individuals don't bear the full brunt whether the payer is the govt. or a private insurer, it makes little difference to them ; b) consumers don't know enough to make informed cost/benefit tradeoffs with health care (frankly, even doctors often don't know because we don't collect that information); c) nationalized health care is off the table in the US now anyways; d) all the nations with nationalized health care pay much less for it than the US does.
Oh man, I'm still a sucker for health care debate...
Not only does Starbucks have horrible, overpriced coffee, they charge for wifi in my town. So I go to non-franchise shops that offer free wifi, and get better coffee too :)
Would it be offtopic to mention the nationalized healthcare debate at this point?
Yes.
I think it's very related.
No it's not.
We did a West Coast road trip this year and stayed in hotels ranging from 5-star Best Westerns to 2-star Motel 6's (um, Motels 6?). Consistently the Motel 6's had much better Wifi (e.g. faster, more secure, and better signal). Where most of the higher end hotels must have had a single WAP for the entire building. Not to mention most of their WPA passcodes were , whereas the Motel 6's gave me a one-use card with a unique passcode on it.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Oh man, I'm still a sucker for health care debate...
But pretty switched on on the subject :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The venetian has free WIFI and good up and down speed I think it was something like at least 5meg and up to 20Meg or more each way.
The reason many of the big boys don't have free WiFi is that in the early 2000's they signed long term contracts with a provider usually the same one the provides the in-room movies.
I used to work for Hilton and that is what happened at our property when we signed a 10 year contract. The provider came in set-up the equipment and took care of the maintenance and the hotel is charged a fee plus a percentage of WiFi revenue. Even though for the cost of 1 months "service" we could have bought and installed the equipment ourselves
While the little guys just went out bought wireless access points, got a DSL or cable modem and just plugged them in.
I was expecting something scathing for all Hyatt sub-brands across the board, and was ridiculously surprised that Hyatt's name popped up at all under the "Best" category.
Apparently the caveat being:
"Hyatt offers free WiFi for guests of certain loyalty program status (Diamond and Platinum)"
I'm not sure if this website realizes that a lot of people aren't going into a hotel reservation with "5 eligible stays or 15 nights in a calendar year" (for Diamond, 25/50 for Platinum jeeze) under their belt to meet that diamond threshold...
Are other hotels really this much worse? I've been to places MUCH crappier than Holiday Inns and they've all managed to squeeze out a couple free megabits for the guest's convenience.
It feels like these guys were going into the survey already with full blown premium memberships or something if needing to spend $1500 in room reservations in a year first to get "free" WiFi doesn't warrant anything more than a footnote.
If you're staying in a hotel once or twice a year, and you absolutely have to stay connected to your twitter and porn then $10-15 is what you pay. You can do without it, seriously.
If you're constantly staying in hotels and need internet access then you should have a card or a phone tethering option (you're paying for wireless internet access already, right?)
Eventually the prices will drop, assuming some other technology doesn't come along and make hotel wi-fi as obsolete as hotel land lines.
I stayed at the Bellagio in Las Vegas a few weeks ago and my employer paid $15 per 24 hrs so I could stay connected. I have no complaints and neither does my employer. I was able to download a 2.5 GB work-related file in about 35 minutes on their wire. In addition, my twitter and porn experienced no unnecessary delays en route to my drunk eyeballs.
I travel quite a bit and especially in the United Kingdom the hotels are trying to gouge you for internet access but I must say bitterly complaining to the manager and asking if he similarly charges separately for power, water and sanitation often results in a lower priced plan.
UK hotels that typically try to charge 15 pounds/day but can be brought down to charge 15 pounds per stay.
Only one bastard thanked me for the idea to put a counter on the toilet flush. :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
What makes me wonder then is why such a disparity between hotels rooms and business/first class vs economy flights.
In hotels, it seems like the basic conveniences, as long as they charge you fractionally little enough for it, you won't mind paying in addition to whatever the room cost already was (~10% a day?). However on flights, the more you spend on your ticket, the more they will go out of their way to plant their lips on your butt as far as letting you board first, get cozy, have a free drink, check a bag for free, etc.
I guess the difference is that you're not getting two disparately priced rooms within one building in the case of hotels?
But it's still pretty damn ironic that those you pay more to, try to screw you over more in the hotel industry. Somewhere along the way apparently it seems image and prestige way overtook actual customer satisfaction and service.
Aircrack
i work in a high end hotel accounting dept. there are two reasons high end hotels will charge for wi-fi. 1) all other luxury, and ultra luxury charge for wi-fi $15 a night 2) long distance revenue continues to fall. while wi-fi continues to rise, even more than making up the difference. but wi-fi fills the hole of once long distance revenue. the business center is getting used less and less. people who stay at a property with room rates of $750 plus, if they have their own laptop, have a 3g card. in our comments from our guests, I think in the past year, 1 person complained about the price, but many many complained about the speed not being university grade. We still charge $2 for local calls, but now people have cell phones. so that revenue is down. I think people who need wi-fi to do business while at a hotel room, and pay $750 +, have a 3g card. If they are from out of the US, they could care less about the price.
Then just use VPN.
This is a solved problem.
Found that Holiday Inn and some of the other Intercontinental properties typically offer free Internet. Some of them, like Staybridge, will actually give you a ridiculously cheap rate on the weekends ($70 for a suite that has two separate bedrooms and a central living room/kitchen). The Internet isn't always wifi but is generally better than my impression of industry average.
I spent a few weeks traveling in TX last year, visiting the in-laws, and stayed at a number of small motels around the Dallas-San Antonio-Houston region - mom & pop, value chains, etc. All of them had free WiFi, except one: Red Roof. This report says Red Roof DOES have free WiFi, but it wasn't the case for me last year. Maybe it was just this one particular motel, it was the worst motel we stayed in the whole trip. The rest of the time, your observation held true. The WiFi was free and pretty reliable. I'd set up an SCP transfer and push hundreds of photos back home overnight. And on the expensive hotel side, I stayed at a ski resort in Durango almost 2 yrs ago, expensive room, crap WiFi. But it was free, at least.
I have two non-negotiable requirements for just about every hotel I stay in: must allow dogs without fee and must have free wifi. In the rare case I go somewhere without my dog then of course free wifi. I haven't stayed in a hotel without free wifi in almost five years.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
I've noticed reliable wifi in North American hotels almost always comes at a price.
What surprised me on a recent road trip from Hanoi to Saigon was the *standard* free wifi at every hotel we stayed at. Wifi cafés were also plentiful everywhere. It seemed strange that a developing country was so far in advance of North America in terms of internet access. Oddly enough the Facebook web site was unreachable (although smartphone apps could read and post to Facebook without any problem).
Doubletree, $180/night + $10/night internet
LaQuinta just down the street $60/night + free internet and breakfast.
The internet was provided (part or all) by Google.
"That's right, Wi-Fi is a make or break amenity for many hotel guests that can sway booking decisions — and that isn't going away."
High-speed internet has been my criteria when on work trips since ~2000. In the early days, CAT5-based internet was fine, as I'd travel with a wifi router anyway. Of course, back then it was still always $10/day, but it was more than worth it for me to be in the email loop while on the road at training events or on customer installs. Plus I'd bring a Cisco 7960 with me and the router would vpn back to the office, avoiding stupid LD charges that the hotels charge, so I was actually saving money for work.
I booked a hotel with hotwire that listed wireless internet access but it turned out that it only had internet access in the lobby.
I called hotwire and told them and they let met change my hotel at no charge even though they dont normally allow changes.
I was staying at the Renaissance in Las Vegas, booked for a week for a HP training class. Checked out after the first night when I realized that Wi-fi was $10/night. Where did I go? The Choice Hotel 2 blocks down the street.. room was quite nice.
How much did that cost the Renaissance? about $500 for the week....
I haven't stayed at a Mariott in years for the same reason.
Wi-fi is a basic assumption in my hotel choices today. I won't even spend the company's money on this.
I have two things I use to weed out hotels when I have a surfeit of choice, and most of the booking/travel sites make it easy to filter by many criteria. I prefer an "exercise room" or some way of exercising onsite, but free wifi (or free Internet in general) is a must; I can always go for a run or a swim (these days, free wifi is becoming like pools at hotels: expected).
Nathan's blog
http://www.strongvpn.com/
http://www.swissvpn.net/
Or if you are an enlightened /. reader, hit a VPS hosting company (Linode seems to be decent, though I've not tried them), set up your own proxy server with multiple services on multiple ports (so you can browse at the Web browser level, use PPP over SSH, or use the VPN service found in Windows or your smartphone.
This way, Igor who is cooking crack in the frying pan down the hall from your hotel room and who also happens to be the IT guy isn't going to be able to do much other than slow or stop your Internet connection.
I've have yet to find a hotel in Britain that has free wifi. Either there's no wifi at all, or it comes at a steep price (usually supplied by a 3rd party like BT). I've been in more British airports with free wifi than hotels.
Same thing incidentally in Spain - either no wifi, or pay through the nose wifi. Next time I go to Spain I'm going to get a PAYG 3G sim card because it'll be much cheaper and I can use it to get maps/info when I'm away from wifi too.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
1. I stay occasionally in London, I have no 3G or other mobile access on Laptop. I moved from one hotel to another in Hounslow area where I have used hotel for many years, as the older one, now family owned, has free WiFi in Lounge and reception area.
2. Yes, free WiFi is a filter, and I now use it.
3. I have same free WiFi in two-family owned old hotel in rural Galloway where I also occasionally go.
Regards Eion MacDonald
I don't think it is necessarily 'funny'... people staying in the economy chains are often counting the cash, and these places need some sort of selling point. I know that I've chosen budget hotels in the UK based on what the net access was like and how costly it was. Folks staying at the bigger hotels, OTOH, either don't care about wi-fi (there for a night or two on a package tour, or a wedding party) or it's where the company has booked them, or they're on expenses anyway.
The big places used to gouge you with phone charges: now few people have to use the hotel phone, so it's Internet access. In the UK and Europe, checking into a hotel that has its Internet access provided by iBahn is a *bad* sign. 15 UKP or more a day for indifferent access. That's where the mobile internet dongle proves its worth.
At least the Westin I've been staying in for the past two months has decent wired and wireless access, and that has been a life-saver. But it wouldn't be cheap if I didn't have enough loyalty karma to get it free...
I'm just back from three weeks in Japan, travelling around and staying in salaryman hotel rooms (well, apart from the suite upgrade at a resort hotel in Atami when they didn't have any single rooms left). Nearly all these small business hotels have free cabled internet which is pretty fast and reliable, a few have rather ropy low-signal wifi with frequent dropouts and reconnections required. In one case I found myself on an 11MBps connection, probably ancient 802.11b hardware.
I much prefer cabled connections to wifi when staying in hotels. Many hotels supply wifi by sticking a router on every other floor in the building as a minimal option. Doing it right with a hotspot in the ceiling over every room is going to be a lot more expensive for them to implement and most of them will not bother.
I stayed in Sydney's Hilton recently, and was not prepared to pay their outrageous Internet connection rates.
Down the road there was a McDonalds offering free WiFi. I spent most of my time there when accessing the net.
If I have been a business traveller it would be idiotic to be using their service, specially in these difficult economic times.
The cost of delivering that "free wi-fi" at a hotel just gets baked into the room charge. So now you pay for wi-fi whether you use it or not. Quit kidding yourself that there's some sort of magical value there. That's not to say that economy hotels won't use it as a loss-leader to get your reservation. But I guarantee that free service is on a cost of doing business line on their balance sheet, which is at least offset by your room charge.
Besides that, wi-fi at hotels just sucks to begin with regardless of how you pay for it. Especially at hotels that host conferences. I pay for a 3G card out of my own pocket just so I can get my job done no matter what the wi-fi situation is at my destination. Seriously.. if being able to do your job somewhere isn't worth paying for dependable service (costs me around $40 a month), maybe you need to re-think how valuable your job is, or at least how important having internet service is. There's nothing more priceless than sitting in a conference with 100 other attendees and being the only person in the room with decent internet connection. What's amazing is how many people depend on wi-fi at hotels when it is notoriously bad.
Granted, I do most of my travel in North America so that works for me. On the rare occasion that I go to somewhere else in the world, I just make do without or pay the price for whatever is available. It's usually a short trip and goes on the expense report, and even then normally not every day since I'm usually at an office most times. If I leave North America on a personal trip, I really don't use internet service anyway.
Even when free, it's times like this that I'll break out the 3G card. When it's really bad, though is when the 3G card connects at 1.5 or 2G speeds (way out in the middle of nowhere).
$ man woman *
-bash:
The day before heading on a Volcano hike up Bromo on the East side of Java, Indonesia I noticed one of the few nicer hotels advertising free Wifi in their restaurant. Upon ordering my meal I logged into the router but was unable to connect to the internet. "It was working an hour ago" I was told... turns out they had the default password and upon further inspection I saw that, although local traffic had amounted to gigabytes the internet traffic was zero. So.. years of scamming customers each contributing bytes to the local traffic and no connection to the internet.. but plenty of meals sold ;)
Just to finish the story.. the bus ride up the volcano ( we're talking 30k or so?) only went halfway at which point you were to be dumped off on the side of the road to fend for yourself.. luckily I hadn't paid yet so avoided that scam!
In China there's very little wifi in the hotels ( a bit easier to spy on the wired connection ).
That was two years ago, I hope they are less insane now. That's $775 a month for internet, over $9,000 per year.
Their gym costs the same.