Fair Wi-fi: Hotels must mend their ways

In its Fair Wi-fi campaign, silicon.com is urging hotels to stop ripping off customers with extortionate fees for wi-fi and internet access, and we have a huge weight of support behind us (sign our petition.)

Influential figures from a broad spectrum of professions are all united behind silicon.com and our claim that rip-off prices for wireless internet access are not only unjustifiable but will stifle and restrict business.

Grant Shapps MP, vice chairman of the Conservative Party, told silicon.com it is worrying that the UK is the most notable offender with these rip-off charges, adding it could damage UK business.

Shapps said: "To keep the UK competitive it's vital business services are available at competitive rates. I congratulate silicon.com for taking the initiative of raising this important issue."

Big businesses certainly agree. Josh Claman, UK head of Dell, told silicon.com: "For business travellers, the ability and convenience of accessing the internet at every hotel they stay should be a given. Affordable, high-speed internet access is something business travellers rely on and it should be a basic service for guests. It should come as standard."

Even within the extended family of the hotel industry there is an awareness rip-off prices will come back to haunt it in the long run.

Tony Walsh, development director at bookings agent LateRooms.com, cited research that suggests wi-fi access is now more important to business travellers than leisure facilities such as a gym - the use of which is often covered by the room rate.

Walsh said: "Customers are currently held to ransom by expensive third-party wireless and broadband providers, and hotels could use free internet access as a major selling tool to business travellers. It is a fact that hotels offering this free service are more popular."

And end users, the ones most affected by rip-off charges which are proving a major obstacle to seamless connectivity, also say it is time for a change.

Arun Aggarwal, head of consulting practice (EMEA) at Tata Consultancy Services, added: "Hotels have to stop using this ridiculous 'minibar' approach to a service as essential as internet access.

"While I understand that hotels have overheads it seems the costs for making use of these facilities are at best disproportionate and at worst daylight robbery.

"Business travellers account for a significant proportion of many hotels' revenue-streams and, as such, should be treated as valued customers to be supported rather than 'cash cows' to be exploited at every opportunity."

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, offshoring director at The National Outsourcing Association, told silicon.com: "My work is seriously compromised if I am away on business or working during a conference in London and I can't get online - or to get online I have to pay an extortionate fee.

"It's about time the hotel industry realised almost all business travellers need wi-fi access as a basic utility that is factored into the room cost - just as the water and electricity use is.

"Wake up, it's the 21st century."