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For those of us that live and die by our laptops, WiFi access at hotels is often a necessary — and occasionally costly — evil. But some hotels are now experimenting with pricing levels that offer guests a discount if they’re willing to accept a lesser internet connection.
A writer over at USA Today recently checked into the InterContinental New York Times Square and was surprised what she saw when she went to access the internet:
When I logged on the InterContinental’s system, I was asked to choose between a $10-a-day option for low bandwidth (good for checking emails and reading online articles) and a $15-a-day option (good for VPN access, sharing PowerPoint presentations and watching movies).
She checked with InterContinental, not known for offering anything at a discount, to see if this was something they were doing elsewhere. A rep for the deluxe hotel chain confirmed they are testing the program at hotels in NYC, San Francisco and Chicago.
Has anyone seen any other hotels offering this sort of pricing for internet access?
Upscale hotels offer guests cheaper Wi-Fi rates, but there’s a catch
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This is why Panera Bread, McDonald’s, and shopping malls offer free wi-fi to draw in the business traveler. Whenever I got stuck in a hotel that required fees for the Internet or that had crappy wi-fi, I’d always get in my car and scope out my surrounding for the free hotspots.
I just got back from my first-ever business trip. I had free wifi at the Holiday Inn Express, although I was given the option to upgrade to paid service. Since I had no problems with the free service, I didn’t need to upgrade.
Two years ago, I spent a lot of time traveling and staying in various hotels that were usually 3 stars or so, and they ALL had free wifi. Have things really changed that much? And why the hell would you pay for it when there are still a ton of decent places that give it to you for free?
I’ve always found it amusing that cheaper hotels (Super 8, Motel 6) will offer free wifi, but the expensive places make you pay for it.
That being said I just jailbreak my iPhone and tether before I go anywhere – it even worked for me when I went to CES in Las Vegas earlier this year.
The hotels started to severely overcharge for phone calls. How well did that work out for them? Now they want to take what they learned and apply it to WiFi. Okay, I guess I’ll always bring my air card.
They need to start doing something better about their wi-fi because from what I’ve heard from friends it’s not good to begin with and I’m sure the slower version is far worse and with smartphones being able to tether to laptops (or use as a wireless hotspot) and modem dongles with 3G (and now one with 4g as well) there’s less reason one would have to use the hotel’s wifi for a fee.
I offer free internet AND a netbook in my rooms. Costs less than A/C. Happy customers are the most important advertising you can have.
I hate hotels, this is going to make my job that much more annoying. I work for a bank that most deals with servers, networking , and the mainframe, but since I work night they just throw the helpdesk at us also. I cannot wait for the phone calls of people complaining saying, my vpn connection is slow. Why cannot some people understand that if you have a slow connection, call the service provider, lol.
seriously, WTF WTF WTF??!! I just don’t get this. Any