Why do expensive hotels charge for internet

The lobby is enormous and elegant. There are staffers everywhere, a check-in desk, a concierge desk, a dining area. President Obama stays here. We head downtown to Hotel The lobby is small and basic. Luxury hotels can charge more because they know their customers will pay more. As for the folks staying at fancy hotels for pleasure? Folks at budget hotels, however, are definitely price sensitive. Since expensive hotels are more likely to have televisions and customers who use pay-per-view, this is plausible.

Another possible theory relies on the different management styles of budget and luxury hotels. The company will enforce certain standards as part of the contract, but since the hotel owners have to bear the expense of maintaining a wifi network, free wifi and a network that can support it will only be a condition if the parent company really pushes for it.

DoubleTree by Hilton, for example , leaves the free wifi decision up to individual owners. Small, budget hostels, in contrast, rarely have this type of indirect management.

The most convincing reason for why expensive hotels charge for wifi, however, is bandwidth issues. Making people pay for wifi may be the only way to ensure that luxury hotels maintain high Internet speeds. While cheap hotels usually offer free wifi, they rarely offer good wifi. Waiting a minute for email to load is par for the course at any hotel, and streaming episodes of Mad Men is a dream deferred. When wifi is free, everyone uses it, which lowers wifi speeds.

This is why many hotels charge for connecting more than one device to the Internet. It's becoming a very expensive proposition for the hotel to maintain these services, so it makes sense that they have to charge for it.

Hotels struggle to maintain speeds for hundreds or thousands of guests and keep up with the pace of technological advancement. One reason full-service, luxury hotels charge for Wi-Fi fees while lower average daily-rate hotels do not is because of the differences in how these hotels are managed. And as hotels lose revenue on previously reliable sources of income, such as video-on-demand and telephone charges, it makes sense that they would seek other sources to make up for the shortfall.

Thus, says Connolly, charging for Wi-Fi may be the only way to ensure high-speed, reliable access. And some argue that because premium hotels are expected to offer high-quality, reliable Internet, they must charge for the service. Each of these hotels had a charge to connect into cyberspace. Sheraton Cleveland Airport where a loyalty program membership means free Wi-Fi. In many cases, the path to free Wi-Fi requires becoming a loyalty member of a hotel brand.

So are many of the others affiliated with Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, or other corporate chains. In general, there are several free WiFi trends at hotels that have become standard. The first is to provide it free to everyone, which is ideal and guest-friendly.