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Charging for hotel wifi is about price discrimination. The only people willing to pay $25/day for in-room wifi are business travelers who aren't paying for it
by dworin 12y ago
Charging for hotel wifi is about price discrimination. The only people willing to pay $25/day for in-room wifi are business travelers who aren't paying for it themselves anyways.
That's why you're more likely to pay for wifi at a business hotel (Marriott/Hilton) than you are at a tourist hotel. It's also why you're more likely to pay for it at a more expensive hotel than a less expensive hotel.
Frequent business travelers care a lot more about reward stays than they do about free wifi (because they're not paying for it, and because the loyalty program will give it to them for free).
The article reads more like a press release for a social media agency (which is who they quote in most of the article) than it does an actual analysis of why hotels charge for Wifi.
- astrocat 12y agoI've also heard that there's service-quality expectations at play: if the wifi is free and it sucks, you're still happy while the hotels that charge for wifi to simply reduce demand (congestion) in order to have a better experience (speed/bandwidth) for those who actually pay. And it's further complicated by the value of ppv entertainment to the hotel - if Netflix/Hulu/whatever works just fine on the hotel wifi, the hotel is losing revenue. Cheap hotels with crapy free internet don't have to worry about that, but hotels that charge are also trying to recoup lost ppv entertainment revenue.