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May 17, 2004

The More You Pay, the More Access Costs

By Glenn Fleishman

Kathy Gill encounters highway robbery in her hotel room: $14.95 per day, per machine: My colleague Kathy Gill is at the WWW2004 conference in New York, and has been astounded by the Sheraton’s data charges: $14.95 per day for wireless access in the hotel, and another $14.95 per day per person for in-room access. She’s peeved.

It’s this irritation that could ultimately transform hotel Wi-Fi. If Kathy had $20 to $80 per month unlimited cell data access (anywhere from 10-50 Kbps up to a few hundred K download speed), even with the slower upload speeds of cellular networks, she might have foregone the $14.95 per day fee. In which case, how does the hotel recoup that money? They can’t.

Take the alternative experience, in which my wife and I spent three nights on the Oregon Coast this last week. I wasn’t working, and just wanted to briefly check my email on the road. The first night, we stayed at an older motel in the process of becoming a resort. For $9.95, I could have had wireless service, but I didn’t need to spend that much. My ISP lacked an 800# and local numbers on the coast. I wound up using my GSM (9600 bps — yes, bits per second) cell phone service which on Cingular’s network comes out of my minutes pool.

Next night, again with no concern about access, we chose a hotel that was about 30 percent cheaper and claimed wireless Internet access for free. Ah, but not in the cheaper part of the hotel. I didn’t need access badly enough to roam to the part of the hotel in which I could get service, so I turned again to the cell phone.

The third night, we stayed at a Best Western in a small town. The room was nice, the rate was 30 percent less than the second night’s, and the deal included free in-room wired broadband and free breakfast. Guess which hotel I’ll choose first next time? All Best Westerns will soon have free in-room broadband—as will most budget hotel chains around the U.S.

Hotels that charge for service might find their high-end customers turning to cell data as that becomes more available and less expensive—or losing customers to the cheaper chains.

(Our first and last nights of our trip were spent at my brother-in-laws and my parents’—both of which offered free Wi-Fi throughout the property.)

Posted by Glennf at May 17, 2004 10:44 PM

Categories: Hotels

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