Back From Vacation
May 17th, 2008 by brianschettler
One thing I don’t understand about some hotels is that they feel they must charge for internet access, even though it costs more to implement the pay services than to just offer it for free. From an old (2003) article about businesses and wifi access:
Now that competitors have started to offer free wired Internet service, Pierce has raised the ante by rolling out free Wi-Fi throughout the chain, with all 100-plus properties expected to offer the service by the start of next year.
Pierce says he didn’t even consider paid Wi-Fi service, saying his research shows that going the paid route isn’t worth the effort. Under the paid model, Pierce calculated that a typical property would have roughly two paid Wi-Fi users a day. After splitting the revenue with a Wi-Fi operator, Pierce says this would return only about $7.50 a day to the franchisee.
The hotel did have a computer available in the lobby, but the internet was heavily filtered. I couldn’t get on many websites (facebook, twitter, etc) and sometimes the filter was just plain stupid. For example, when I tried to access my Oklahoma State email, it told me that the website was “prohibited for the following reasons: Organizational Email.” But below that it gave me the option to either continue to the site “for work-related purposes” or I could go back to the previous page. Do they really think people will say, “Oh, I typed in this address expecting to visit this website, but now I think I’ll turn back because of this message” ?
But all in all, I will say it is good to get away from constant connectivity for a while.