Steve Madgwick ponders the question of just how much people will pay for convenience?
The first thing I did, completely accidentally, was theatrically mouth a swearword my mother would be ashamed of me for.
I managed to stifle the accompanying sound, thank God, because the bar adjacent to the hotel’s reception desk was packed with people but deadly quiet.
Even if I did go around swearing at hotel staff (which I don’t), the service at this particular airport hotel certainly did not warrant it; efficient, affable, exactly what you would expect from a respected brand.
But it was a simple answer to a simple question that provoked my silent bout of Tourette’s.
“Do you have wi-fi?,” I had asked.
“Yes, sir. That will be $9 per hour or $20 for the evening,” she had answered courteously but noticeably cautiously, noting my reaction, as though she had seen it before.
I declined relatively calmly and then left it at that, kicking myself afterwards for not writing a diatribe and stuffing it into the hotel’s suggestion box.
Sure, $20 doesn’t buy much these days: a round of drinks for three, 12 packets of chewing gum, 20 apps for your phone (and, of course, it buys you two copies of your favourite great-value magazine).
But it also happens to buy a fortnight’s internet access at home; so why the user-pays blow-out?
Up in my room, in a huff, I began to take stock of what exactly you get for around $250 at an airport hotel, mindful of the fact I had arrived late in the evening and was due to check out before breakfast, barely seven and a half hours in total.
All the usual good-hotel boxes were ticked here: friendly staff, clean room, instant hot water, quality fittings, fresh linen, lots of little bottles of lotions and the usual array of befuddling light switches.
But a similarly tariffed hotel closer to the city, in a pretty town or up the side of a ski slope would also offer these – with the added advantage of not being marooned next to an airport.
The principal commodity an airport hotel sells is convenience. Not views, not excursion options, and certainly not atmosphere. So they should compensate for geographical limitations with a built-in, all-inclusive convenience package, particularly because their market is predominately business focused.
In the US, airport hotels are the 7Eleven of the accommodation world; using their strategic positions for an inequitable advantage to leverage a hefty premiums with no tangible value. In Australia we are lucky enough to have a range of quality options that don’t take advantage of their tarmac proximity; hotels that can stand on their own foundations as quality accommodation. This is not a witch-hunt about all airport hotels, far from it, and that is why I found no need to name this one.
My only message is that $20 for one night’s wi-fi teeters on the top of the slippery slope of taking advantage of the customer.
I have stayed at many hotels in Europe that have offered complimentary internet. So why should it cost so much here?
Someone please explain…
If only this was a problem limited to airport hotels, unfortunately it seems to be across the board at most of the major brands.
We were fortunate to travel extensively through India, Nepal and Thailand last year and found free wifi almost everywhere we stayed, including a small guestouse in a remote community in north western Nepal. If they can do it, why can’t we?
Sue, that’s just the point. The high price of wi-fi access in Australia stifles productivity, and makes Australian Holidays that little bit less enjoyable. Cheers Ed.
Long committed to being among the first to anticipate the needs of the busy traveller, Radisson Blu has been offering Free high-speed Internet access to all guests and meeting delegates who visit our hotels all around the world.
Radisson Blu Hotel Sydney was one of the first hotels to introduce this in Sydney and we find that it adds an invaluable service to our guests because they are getting value for money. A true 5-Star service.
We have just stayed at one of the “Vibe” hotels and found a similar charge for wi-fi. I was disgusted and decided to forget about using it. Just an absolute rip off.
We found it best to go to the internet café ( $4.00 hour) down the street in Sydney as opposed to the Holiday Inns fees
mind you when we were playing with pour laptop in the hotel we did get to use someone else’s internet for the evening free,thanx big daddy
Okay. Here’s a little tip for all of you who bothered to read to the bottom of the page….
When trying to access a website on wi-fi at the hotel, just add “?.jpg” to the end of the URL. It will get you to the website you are looking for more often than not. It relies on the network not having an images redirect in place, but works most of the time in Australia.
Next week we will share with you how to get decent internet access all around australia for less than $30 a month. Perfect for travelling.
We have just returned from 5 weeks in Europe – London, Paris, Amsterdam and a host of small towns and villages. All offered free Wi-Fi – from large hotels to small ones and even in the time-share resort in country Netherlands. Why is Australia so different? This is just one of the reasons overseas people comment upon to us about how expensive it is to tour in Australia. About time we lifted our game.
Always ask that question when we travel in Australia. We spent 2 mths in the USA last year and only paid in one hotel all the rest had free Wi-fi. We were in small towns and no problems at all accessing it for free. All cafes in the cities we visited mostly had it for free also. You just had to get the password which they would give you when you bought a cup of coffee. NZ was the same. It is a rip off in Aust when you see the number of rooms they have in hotels and most people access the internet, hotels make a killing when you add it up.
Free wi fi is now, or should be, as commonplace as other components for a comfortable stay eg. air conditioning, flat screen TV, satellite channels, …all inclusive.
Sadly Wi-Fi is seen as just another thing hoteliers can squeeze the customer for, and they wonder why people don’t come back. We have started staying at cabin parks if it’s a 1 or 2 night stay they are comfy and most offer free Wi-Fi.
As annoying as I find the hotels practice of wanting ridiculous prices for Internet access I am even more annoyed at the practice of advertising “free Internet” only to discover it is for only one device and its some ridiculously small amount of data, beyond which, you guessed it, we’re back to the rip off pricing. My advice, vote with your feet and support the places who do the right thing.