Wi-Fi hotspots rip off rant for travellers
By Darren Cronian on Saturday, January 24th, 2009

Over the last couple of years the price of internet access has drastically reduced in price. So, you can imagine how annoyed I get when I see hotels, airports and popular spots for tourists charging a fortune for Wi-Fi access.

Wi Fi hotspots rip off rant for travellers

Taking advantage of internet usage

The truth is that Britain is lagging behind other European countries in making the internet easily accessible. Hotels, airports etc are taking advantage of the need of internet access for travellers and are making massive profits.

Those establishments that offer free Wi-Fi you find that the connection is poor.

Lack of Wi-Fi spots

That’s sadly not the case where I live, and found the same problems whilst travelling around a lot of other English cities. I’ve lost count the amount of time I have spent roaming around the streets trying to find hotspots. It’ll be interesting to see if I come up with the same problems in Berlin later this year.

I am interested to hear your experiences of connecting to the internet on the move.


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15 responses to “Wi-Fi hotspots rip off rant for travellers”

Josh | 24 January, 2009 at 8:52 pm

I remember when airport wifi was first coming out and was free. I suspect that the wifi providers got together and conspired to make sure airports only offer paid wifi. If one provider gets an airport to lock down the wifi, they let customers from other providers login with “roaming”. All the wifi providers benefit by charging for something that was previously free.

Wifi should be free.

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eileen | 24 January, 2009 at 10:55 pm

Here in Chile, (mainly in Santiago) throughout tons of downtown and into Sanhattan, the pricey shiny glassy skyscrapery section there are free wifi hotspots everywhere. Sometimes you have to buy a cuppa joe to get the password, but much of the time it’s unlocked. And the Santiago metro has WiFi, as do most of the copious libraries. Can’t beat that!

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Jack | 24 January, 2009 at 11:49 pm

WiFi… In our Tenerife hotel xmas 07 they put in a router for free in our room (not WiFi, but cabled). In my local coffee shop I have the option of paying £12 for a day. Yikes!

For the UK, I have a Vodafone mobile broadband, it’s much cheaper in the long run.

Yeah, WiFi should be free in coffee shops, hotels, and airports.

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Gary | 25 January, 2009 at 6:19 am

I’ve found that cheaper hotels and hostels will often provide free wifi with a better connection more often than an upscale hotel will. Likewise, I found free wifi to be all over SE Asia, but almost unheard of in NZ/Australia or Dubai.

In the US, you are more likely to get get free internet in a cheap motel than in a high end hotel.

I know I’m not alone in saying that internet access is near the top of what I want from a hotel room. I care about that more than having a TV. I will usually make my decision on where to say on the basis of who offers free broadband and will gladly stay at a lesser hotel to get it.

Hotels need to wake up. Making customers pay for Internet is like making them pay for television or electricity.

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Darren Cronian | 25 January, 2009 at 9:47 am

Hotels need to wake up. Making customers pay for Internet is like making them pay for television or electricity

I completely agree Gary – hopefully, in time that’ll improve. I was disappoined this week when trying to find free wi-fi in my home city.

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Dave | 25 January, 2009 at 12:10 pm

Yes I really avoid hostels and hotels that charge. It’s nearly the first thing I look at aside from price. If KFC in Romania can offer free WiFi then so can an airport.

I guess some airports figure they can charge as they know there are a lot of people sitting around waiting for hours. But in hotels and the like I think some managers are still behind the times and too caught up in Admin costings versus what people are looking for these days. I say this as I know the costs of setting up WiFi thoughout a large building, and then offering it for nothing. So the person signing off on the budget is probably thinking how to recoup all this, not realising that in a lot of places people consider it an expected service. Too right too!

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Rohan | 25 January, 2009 at 1:11 pm

Agree with all the comments about Wi-Fi, it should be free and those that do not offer it for free are in it for the profit not to provide a custome friendly free service.

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Darren Cronian | 25 January, 2009 at 7:07 pm

@ Dave

Yep, I think if hotel owners realised that more and more of us are looking for hotels with free or cheap internet access then they might lower the price or make it free to customers. Like many of the commenters here, internet access is just as important to me as a comfortable and clean hotel room nowadays.

@ Rohan

Welcome back, seems ages since I’ve seen you around. Yes, I think they use it as a profit mark-up, I was charged £10 a night in one hotel in Birmingham last year, of £1 for 10 minutes which wasn’t much better.

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Simon | 27 January, 2009 at 11:13 am

A friend of mine recently flew from Terminal 5 at Heathrow, and was suprised to see that there was no free wifi in the terminal – only a paid-for service. He wasn’t best pleased – it’s probably one of the most useful places to have it whilst you’re sitting around waiting to depart (or waiting for someone to arrive!)

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Darren Cronian | 27 January, 2009 at 12:10 pm

@ Simon

Yes, I have noticed this at a few airports now, it’s profiteering. I’ve seen a lot of the paid wifi spots are provided by BT, so I am assuming that the airport or establishment receives some sort of commission from them.

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Henry | 28 January, 2009 at 6:59 pm

It’s true, that these prices are still way much too high. In those places there is no competition and mobile internet still costs a lot in many countries.

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Ooty | 1 February, 2009 at 6:56 pm

Internet has become a necessity!! these people will relize when people start shifting to mobile phones..

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Jesse | 1 February, 2009 at 11:49 pm

In Australia you’ll find that almost no hotels provide free internet or wireless.

Just to give you an idea at home I get 30gigs a month for $120AUD (£50)

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Caitlin | 3 February, 2009 at 10:16 pm

I really hate it when hotels advertise wifi and don’t specify that you have to pay for it. It’s like advertising that they have a pool and not mentioning that there’s an entry fee.

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Hassine | 3 March, 2010 at 4:45 pm

If WiFi is free people like me wont get paid unless i am a charity funded by the government which you, tax payer, pay for it anyway :) Learn something people, nothing is free in this life as no one will invest the money to put a wifi infrastructure and get nothing from it. If you want free wifi then expect to get paid nothing for your labor.

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