Luke Mellor argues that hotels shouldn’t give internet access away for free, since doing so reduces their incentives to actually service the connection. I wholeheartedly disagree.
Unless upscale business hotels want to emulate some European ultra-discount airlines by offering a completely a-la-carte model for the provision of every hotel amenity, they should include such basic provisions as internet in the base room rate. Paying for wi-fi is fine at, say, a Motel 6, but not at, say, a Sheraton. (I know, the irony is that the lower-quality motel is more likely than the luxury hotel to offer the free amenities like phone calls and wi-fi.)
Which is why this following nugget makes me shake my head and mutter “unbelievable.” Shel Holtz recently paid $12.95 for wi-fi access at the Renaissance Toronto Hotel Downtown, only to be bombarded with banner ads that forced themselves onto his screen. He offered a rant on the subject on his blog.
Bad enough. But the real “crime” appears in the followup comments. Not only did these ads appear when Shel fired up the internet in his room. The ads similarly appeared the next day when he ran a wifi connection in the meeting room:
I’m in a meeting room doing a workshop. Here, I pay $25 per day for the wireless connection AND THE SAME DAMN ADS SHOW UP, which means my audience — people who paid to attend the workshop — have to see them. Unbelievable. Is anybody from Marriott paying any attention at all?
Unacceptable. In a business setting, after paying that kind of cash for a single day’s internet access (ridiculously high, by the way), there is no way you should be seeing ads.
I’m even willing to accept ads on a free internet connection, the same way I install NetZero on my laptop as an emergency backup ISP. (I admit, I haven’t used it in years, but it’s there, and I’ll put up with ads for the connection in a pinch.)
The Renaissance in Toronto, part of the Marriott chain, is not alone in this. It’s also not a chain-wide policy. The local franchisee apparently decided to milk a little more revenue out of the megabytes running through the hotel’s wires.
But forcing all paying customers to view ads for online poker while they’re conducting business in a public setting is out of line. Is it time for a Hotel Wi-Fi Hall of Shame Wiki ?
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November 17th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Apparently, it’s NOT spyware, though. In his post, he writes:
November 17th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Not to be contradictory, but it sounds more likely he got infected with spyware.
Unless he physically installed software on his machine, ads aren’t likely to “Force” their way in during a presentation.
November 17th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Should hotels charge for wi-fi? If yes, can they still put ads on your PC?…
Should hotels charge for wi-fi ? If so, then they shouldn’t be putting pop-up banners on your screen. Point, counterpoint, and a worst-case scenario….
November 18th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
hotels using internet access as a profit center always turn me off. they claim to cater to me (a businessman), yet they charge for the things i need to do business with. and they want me to be happy about it? not a chance.
November 21st, 2006 at 7:43 am
An update on this issue is up on Shel’s blog. Marriott’s John Wolf wrote this response:
That said, I agree with the anonymous commenter above regarding standards for chain hotels. Inconsistency (resulting from franchising, or for any other reason) may not have been the cause of this specific internet issue, but it’s a problem across the industry, from the customer’s point of view.
November 21st, 2006 at 7:03 am
This is unacceptable. I mean, really, putting ads for online poker on your screen when you’re paying $25 a day to use the hotel’s monopoly wi-fi provider for a presentation to clients?? In a room that you paid for? Unacceptable!
This is what hotel franchising with lousy oversight by the mothership gives you. Renaissance (or Marriott, or all of the hotel chains really) need to set better standards. If they even bother to think this stuff through.
November 24th, 2006 at 6:50 am
Internet access should be free! I am no expert, but how much is it really costing these hotels to provide it? Does it cost any more than the cost of providing towels, soap, toilet paper, or breakfast?
Having recently stayed at the Holiday Inn Vienna and paid the not inexpensive room charge of Eur137 per night, I was asked to pay Eur10 for just one hour, or Eur4 for 10 minutes access!!
Surely it is time that these charges were included in the cost of the room, in the same way that breakfast is normally included?
By contrast the Scandic hotels are excellent, not just because of the breakfasts, but they offer free wireless internet access. I did have a little trouble with the connection at the Scandic in Vilnius (Lithuania) recently which was terribly slow – an American guest was complaining bitterly about it at reception – but hey, we are talking about Lithuania, not the USA, and at least it was free.
May 31st, 2007 at 1:35 am
They also do their business and you pay for being nicely served!)))
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 pm
[...] Images source: upgradetravelbetter.com [...]
March 28th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I’m staying at a hotel that uses superclick. It is annoying to say the least.
I’ve had one real popup ad, and an another annoying popup that controls the access. It pops up every five minutes, but at least does not contain an ad.
May 14th, 2011 at 8:37 pm
at a Holiday Inn, superclick.exe interfered with Google seaches, the back key would not work. My USB wireless mouse also worked intermittently until I removed superclick.exe.
In short it is spyware & it sucks.
November 13th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
I had the same problem at a Holiday Inn Express I stayed at last week. Popups when connected to hotel wifi. They went away after I turned on my own wifi hotspot.
After I left, I was wondering if temporarily uninstalling java or flash would have killed the popups.