Anonymous

USA

Hospitality Technology Consultant

I do not believe that service providers are the cause of higher Wi-Fi access. Why not?

Hoteliers negotiate the deals with service providers and make the choices on whether to charge and how much to charge. If a service provider is dictating this then the service provider chosen, was chosen in error.

That said, the cost of maintenance, monitoring and service levels vary by service provider and some may charge a bit more per room per month than another. But again that is the choice of the hotelier whether to pay more for the service or not. In a fixed fee model the expense is known, in a revenue share model there may be little or no expense .

Bottom line Wi-Fi is a required service and hoteliers should be reasonable about what is charged or they will have to deal with what happened to Telephone Revenues deteriorated due to cell phone use! No the industry is going to have to compete against GSM, EVDO, WIMax, etc and the customer may not even have to use the hotels Wi-Fi service. If the industry prices commodity type services reasonably then revenues will remain for the long term, if the "make a quick buck " approach is taken at the expense of the customer, the customer will always win in the long term and revenues will once again be lost.