It is no secret that free Wi-Fi is good for business, so it is available practically everywhere, from pubs and service stations, to public institutions.
However, it is still not available in most hotels and according to a survey carried out by travel site Gogobot, posh hotels are still charging an arm and a leg for a bit of Wi-Fi.
On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with charging a few pounds for unlimited Wi-Fi, but the survey also confirms another angle – the pricier the hotel, the pricier the Wi-Fi. It is cheeky, to say the least.
Gogobot’s survey of UK hotels revealed that some establishments, such as the Hilton, charge as much as £15 per day. Smaller boutique or independent hotels are cheaper and some offer free Wi-Fi, while others charge up to £5 and £8 per day. It doesn’t sound like too much, but the cost can quickly add up in a matter of days and it is obvious that frequent travellers (or their employers) could end up wasting hundreds of pounds on overpriced Wi-Fi over the course of a single year.
What’s more, the survey found that Wi-Fi access was at times spotty and unreliable, reports Mashable. Quality remains a problem, no matter how much you pay.
“There is no correlation between the amount you pay and the quality you get,” Kelly Lees, general manager in Europe said. She argued that tetherless travel is here to stay and the days of connecting to the internet using Ethernet in hotels are “long gone”.
However, things could be about to change. Lees says Wi-Fi prices are starting to affect hotel ratings. Travellers who believe they were ripped off on Wi-Fi will not give hotels a five-star rating. In addition, the availability of low cost 3G/4G services could make hotel Wi-Fi as obsolete as Ethernet, unless hotels finally realize that they stand to gain more by offering free Wi-Fi rather than making their guests pay through the nose for every byte consumed on business trips.
