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Exactly. There is a similar phenomenon with hotels. Some hotels cater to people who pay with their own money, others to people on expense accounts. The hotels
by braythwayt 8y ago
Exactly.
There is a similar phenomenon with hotels. Some hotels cater to people who pay with their own money, others to people on expense accounts.
The hotels that cater to people on expense accounts often have what appears to be terrible customer service, but that's only because the "guests" are not the customer, the accounts payable and event management groups are the customers.
Those users get great features they care about, like unified billing across multiple groups in multiple locations, &c &c.
- magduf 8y agoCan you specify which hotels are the ones that cater to people on expense accounts please? I've never heard this, but it makes sense and I'd like to avoid those hotels.
- braythwayt 8y agoIt used to be that you could apply "The Coffee Test:" When I started my career, the hotels that gave you free coffee (either in the room, or in the lobby) catered to people paying their own way. The hotels that made you call room service and order a $6 cup of instant, plus tip... They catered to corporations. Nowadays almost everyone has some kind of instant coffee machine in the room. It could be that free WiFi is the new marker for quickly delineating one from the other.
- burntwater 8y agoWifi and continental breakfast. At cheaper hotels, both will often be free. In an interesting twist, while a free continental breakfast will often be significantly lower quality than a paid higher-end breakfast, I've found that the free wifi is almost always significantly better than the paid wifi. In fact, many business hotels have tiered wifi plans. And they all suck, even their most expensive plans will be worse than the Motel 8 down the street.
- magduf 8y agoOk, but I'm still wondering which hotels are these corporate-friendly anti-consumer hotels. I haven't seen any hotels with non-free Wifi, and I've stayed at quite a few different big ones. As for continental breakfast, sure it's not as good as some really good sit-down breakfast restaurant, but it's free and more importantly it's fast: you just go down to the lobby and either eat it there or grab some stuff and take it back to your room to munch on before you leave for the day. It's a big time-saver. Going to a separate restaurant and waiting for food to be made for you and delivered and then waiting and waiting and waiting for the waiter to bring you the check takes a lot of time.
- freeone3000 8y agoMariott-branded Mariott, such as the Courtyard. DoubleTree by Hilton. Generically, airport hotels.
- darklajid 8y agoStayed at a Courtyard on HongKong just two weeks ago. Wifi was free.
- emodendroket 8y agoDo you not live in the US?
- _acme 8y agoAny hotel nicer than your average Sheraton (Weston, W Hotels, etc.) will not have free Wi-Fi. Sheratons might not even have free Wi-Fi. Where you have been staying seem like they'd be classified as "motels" (like a Best Western Express or whatever) not actual "hotels".
- microtherion 8y agoI tend to stay in the nicer class of hotels, and I can't remember the last time I paid for WiFi (though there often is a paid tier available with ostensibly better throughput, and sometimes there are restrictions on # of devices or such).