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Even Premier Inn now “gets it” on free WiFi.
Premier Inn offers great-value hotel rooms and is now including 30 mins of free WiFi in the rate
Hurrah! Premier Inn recently announced it will give guests 30 minutes free WiFi access a day in all its UK hotels. A move to be welcomed by guests sick of paying through the nose for internet access during hotel stays. This still leaves the chain slightly in the slipstream of its main competitor Travelodge, which announced last summer that it will now offer free unlimited WiFi in all its Bar Cafes. But it’s a step in the right direction.
Our friend Karen over at Europe a la Carte has played intrepid detective and discovered that the free 30 minutes will at least be given per guest and not per room. Upon check-in, each guest will simply be provided with a code to redeem the free access which keeps things nice and simple.
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30 minutes of free internet isn't enough for accomplishing much but is symbolic of the recognition that WiFi is now a basic necessity even for budget travellers.
For anyone who over-runs the half hour time slot, Premier Inn have also reduced the cost of additional WiFi access. The charges will be fairly reasonable: £3 for 24 hours, £10 for one week, £20 for one month and £125 for 12 months (useful if you’re a frequent guest). This baby-step is yet another victory for the London Hotels Insight campaign for free WiFi.
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It looks like both groups have listened to our call for them to grasp the free WiFi opportunity for budget hotel brands (which is incidentally one of the most read articles on this blog). And it makes the excuses given by expensive London hotels that charge extra for WiFi – a list which currently includes The Dorchester, Soho Hotel, Sofitel St James, London Belgraves, InterContinental Park Lane, Hilton and many others - sound even more silly.
Come on luxury hotels of London, if even budget hotel groups are moving towards including WiFi in their room rates then why can’t you?
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Photo credits: Premier Inn.
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Interesting article and I think Premier Inn adopting this free Wi-Fi policy albeit for just 30 minutes will start to put the pressure on other Hotel groups to match or better the offer. Excessive hotel Wi-Fi charges have long been a well justified complaint we see alot from our London Hotel booking site. I just hope the lost revenue is not clawed back somewhere else!
Some clarifications that made this NOT a good deal…
1) The free 30 minutes is not voucher come based. It is done through a login landing page. This means that the free 30 minutes is available to all guests in a room individually. So they can all each have 30 minutes. However…
2) Thereafter, the chargeable element is PER DEVICE, not per room. This means that even with the new reduced rates, wifi for a family all in the same room is still the same disgracefully high extortionate price it always has been, as a family of four, and with the potential of multiple devices, could end up having to pay SIX lots of access fee, even though they are all in the same one room. This is a very poor way of pricing it, even despite the new reduced rates. Your article does not realise this or pick up on how pricing works…
Thank you Patrick for clarifying. It will be interesting to see if Premier Inn comments and tells us why they’ve organised it in this way.