Forget flowers and fruits, give me free WiFi !!

What's the deal with hotels charging for wireless internet access?? Its downright highway robbery, as evidenced in the pile of prepaid cards I took a photo of.

I attended a conference (a telecomm conference some more mind you) in Bangkok recently and had to endure 4 days of no decent internet access. I stayed at Fraser Suites http://bangkok.frasershospitality.com/ which is a lovely place, but scored terrible on internet access. While they had good wireless coverage even in the rooms, access to the wireless is NOT free and also access is only tied to each laptop - meaning, if you have 3 people staying at their 2 bedroom service apartments with say 3 laptops, you have to pay three times for wireless access at USD10/= per day. Then at the Hilton Millenium where my conference was held, not only they did not provide any wireless they insisted that I purchase a prepaid card of USD10/= per hour access. All in all, my partner and I spend a total of over USD80/= (or RM270/=) worth of internet access for the 4 days. That's obscene blackmail.

What annoys me is that, the conference organisers and the hotel people don't even have a clue that access wireless on your laptop is totally different from checking your occasional email in the free internet access PCs set up in the lobby. I need the access during the conference not only to catch up with emails, but need it for messaging with my office and also to research what the conference speakers are speaking on, especially when the speaker get boring. And you can’t very well spend the whole conference being in the lobby using the free wired internet access provided. For a conference (especially an IT related one) that charges USD595/=, they should have just given everyone a free password for wireless internet access.

It's even worse when you are staying off site like what I did. Not only you have to pay for wireless internet access at your hotel room, they also make you pay for the wireless in the conference hotel. To make matters worse, even the wireless that I paid for at Fraser Suites is dismal in speed and performance. With all the sophisticated network management hardware and software that they have, its cumbersome and annoying to use. While I understand I need to pay small fee for internet access, but this is getting ridiculous, considering that the room rate is around USD100 - USD150 for a typical 5-star hotel.

In fact, forget the fresh flowers or basket of fruits in the room, just give me FREE WiFi. In fact, I think most hotels probably spend a lot more on flowers in their lobby than they do on providing decent wireless internet in their public areas. After all, it's really nothing except sticking a WiFi router to the flat rate DSL line which probably cost the hotel USD20 a month.

Here's my prediction:
Just as the advent of mobile phones which killed the hotel phone revenues, after hearing horror stories in the 70s and 80s that hotels were charging up to 10 times for making local calls on their land line. I believe one of these days those hotels who charge exorbitant prices for internet access will one day see those revenues disappear, when 3G, 4G or WiMAX roaming becomes more prevasive.

So bottom line is , next time my criteria for choosing a hotel anywhere on business or holiday would be if they can provide affordable and reasonable broadband wireless internet or better yet, Free WiFi !!