Hotel Internet Access

Image: Leonard McLane

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A decade ago we were complaining about the cost of calls from hotel-room phones. Why, we wondered, did cheap hotels give us free calls, but fancy, five-star joints ding us even for toll-free numbers? Who made more sense: The general manager who insisted that telephone calls were an integral part of the nightly rate, or the one who claimed he wouldn't think of charging a guest for a service he or she didn't use, so anyone who used a hotel's telephone system had to pay inflated, à la carte prices?

Mobile phones mooted that debate, and no business traveler even thinks about using a guest-room telephone today. But the deep, philosophical disagreements are back—over the price hotels may or may not charge to access high-speed internet and WiFi service.

Business travelers expect select-service properties (that's politically correct, 21st-century lodging jargon for "cheap hotels") to offer free wired and/or wireless internet access. And free access is standard at places like Courtyard by Marriott, Hampton Inn, and Four Points by Sheraton.

"You can't compete in the [select-service] segment if you don't include free internet as part of the room rate," says Tony Isaac, president of LodgeWorks, which operates hotels under the Hilton Garden Inn and Hyatt Summerfield Suites brands and owns a group of suite properties called Hotel Sierra. "Guests demand it. They need it to work. They use it for entertainment. They don't care about 24-hour room service or bellhops. What they expect is the ability to get on the Net free from anywhere in the hotel."

When you climb the lodging-price ladder, however, internet access becomes an add-on service. Hilton may give it away at its Garden Inn and Hampton Inn brands, but internet is à la carte at its upmarket Hilton and luxury Conrad and Waldorf-Astoria properties. Ditto for Marriott, which charges for internet at its eponymous full-service hotels and its ritzy Ritz-Carltons, but offers it free at its Courtyard and Fairfield brands. Other big lodging groups—Starwood, InterContinental, Hyatt—follow the same formula: Free at the lower-priced brands appealing to road warriors, fee at fancier properties likely to draw more leisure travelers.

"I don't apologize for charging $15 a night for internet," says the general manager of a luxury resort property who nevertheless demanded anonymity. "Only a fraction of my guests use the internet when they're staying with me. Those that want it pay. Those that don't aren't paying for it as part of their room rate."

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