Hotel WiFi Should Be a Right, Not a Luxury
Sarah Lacy
TechCrunch.com
Friday, January 1, 2010; 1:39 PM
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101568_pf.html>
I’m in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee for Christmas and on a drive between Memphis and Nashville I noticed that every $30/night hotel offered free wireless Internet access. Further, when we got to Nashville and checked into the relatively low-frills Holiday Inn Express we had better wireless Internet access than I?ve had in hotels around the US and the world?some of which I paid double to stay in.
What gives with hotel WiFi?
This is a ten-year-old technology that has improved in speed and quality nearly everywhere?in homes, in offices, in public spaces, in coffee shops, in airports?even on planes. You can even get free WiFi at Krystal, a fast food chain that?s on par with White Castle and sells hamburgers for less than $1 each. Over the past two years I?ve stayed at more than two-dozen hotels around the United States and the emerging world. I?ve noticed a trend that seems to fly in the face of basic economics and technology adoption: The pricier and fancier hotel, generally the worse quality the WiFi, if it exists at all.
On a trip to Boston two years ago my fancy downtown, five-star hotel had no wireless access. The brand new W in Santiago, Chile has no wireless access. In India, Rwanda and Argentina I?ve had to buy expensive 24-hour WiFi passes, which can add up to hundreds of dollars per stay, for a connection that was just OK. But I knew better than to complain: The quality of the connection is almost always better in emerging markets than Western Europe.
London is hands-down the worst: I?ve stayed at the Sanderson in London twice and always had a hard time getting online, and I?ve also stayed at the Malmaison where even the wired connection didn?t work. I had to go down to the lobby to get a signal. Even then it was like the early days of wireless where you wandered around holding your laptop looking for bars like you were panning for gold.
Arrington may have his silly germaphobe, fist-bump movement. MG may be determined to hold AT&T accountable for its embarrassingly bad iPhone service. Here?s my outrage: Why in 2010 do so many hotels have zero, unreliable or outrageously expensive wireless Internet access?
This is clearly not a cost issue when economy hotels like Holiday Inn and Days Inn have no problem offering free wireless access from the middle of nowhere in the South. (Not to mention Krystal.) This is an issue of greed or tech ignorance on the part of luxury hotels and consumers and business travelers need to start showing some outrage.
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