London Hotels Insight provides up-to-date, independent advice for your perfect stay in London. We research guest feedback, meet management and identify hotels at the top of their game.
London hotel free WiFi touchdown is launched!
We've just launched our free WiFi "touchdown" campaign: we'll tweet and blog live from "good guy" London hotels that provide free WiFi to their guests
This blog has been campaigning intensely for free WiFi at hotels for quite a while. We’ve been supported by a network of leading travel bloggers and tweeters across the world including the likes of Velvet Escape, Top Travel Content Europe, Elliott.org, Travel Rants and many others.
The hostility to hotel WiFi charges across the blogosphere is almost universal and yet many hoteliers choose to ignore it, while hypocritically pretending they’re “in” on Twitter and Facebook. They’re acting like embarassing dads – inappropriately dressed and showing off dated moves in a club they don’t belong in. Because charging guests extra for WiFi at expensive hotels goes against the whole grain of how people live today.
Hotels in London impose some of the highest charges in the world for internet use, despite operating in one of the world’s most profitable hotel markets in a generally tech-friendly city. Why should guests at The Ritz pay £26 per day extra for WiFi when patrons of McDonald’s get it for free?
The Ritz charges handsomely for luxury rooms and amazing afternoon teas but will then slap on a huge extra fee for internet access...but this grand old hotel is by no means the only culprit
The worst culprits are in the luxury sector and we’ve been naming and shaming several recently – largely because they often don’t have the guts to be transparent about such charges on their websites. At least budget operators like Tune Hotels list the costs before you book.
As social media, mobile working and smartphones become ever more pervasive in everyday life, the trend in the London luxury hotel sector seems to be perversely moving in exactly the opposite direction. This appears to be particularly the case when hotels are taken over by a new owner (and presumably one who has his head buried in the sand).
Examples of this worrying trend include the otherwise brilliant Stafford London (which had free WiFi until its takeover by Kempinski) and potentially also Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley which were recently taken over by the Barclay brothers – although the WiFi policy of the (previously free WiFi) former Maybourne Hotels is yet to be confirmed either way.
Even the former Mint Hotels (the entire business model of the group was based on being fresh and tech-savvy with free iMacs in rooms) may start charging for WiFi at some hotels after recently being bought out by Hilton.
While even cheap Travelodges now offer free WiFi in Bar Cafes (despite rates usually below £100/night), several big-name hotels prefer to profit from a basic necessity
Old 5 star stalwarts like The Ritz and The Dorchester – where you might easily pay upwards of £400 for a room – still recklessly charge for WiFi. As do the big upscale chains like InterContinental (though internet is perversely free in its cheaper Indigo brand) and Hilton…shame on you!
Even boutique groups like otherwise well-managed Firmdale Hotels – which runs the Soho Hotel, Covent Garden Hotel and Haymarket Hotel – have a shortsighted WiFi policy even though their TripAdvisor reviews complain about it. Firmdale apparently has an average room rate more than double the London average so there’s really no excuse (thank goodness at least Red Carnation Hotels offers free WiFi across its six London boutique hotels and Radisson Edwardian in about a dozen central London hotels).
Some hotels like the gorgeous 5 star Sofitel St James and The Langham have a confusing “dual” system where a slow free connection is offered alongside a paid-for fast one – wasting their guests’ time in trying to figure out what they need (probably with a view to persuading them to pay as much as possible for the premium version). Why would anyone who aspires to stay in a 5 star hotel be happy with a slow internet connection?
So we’ve now decided to fire a fresh salvo in our London hotel free WiFi campaign which we’ve called “London hotel free WiFi touchdown” to promote the good guys – hotels that actually “get it” in our view and deserve a wider audience to be aware of them.
We hope that our London hotel free WiFi campaign will help to get the word out on "the good guys" with free WiFi as opposed to hotels which deliberately omit to mention their steep internet charges on their websites
In the next month or so, a colleague and I will personally visit different London hotels and test out their free WiFi. While there, we may also do a quick tour, take photos and tweet and blog about anything funky or interesting we discover at the hotel we’re visiting on any given day.
In short, we’ll do all the stuff that guests staying at free WiFi hotels will naturally do to give a hotel free publicity and which the ones that bizarrely charge for WiFi are missing out on (many paradoxically invest in setting up frequently-updated Twitter accounts but will charge their guests more than £20 a day to give them a positive mention while staying in their hotel!).
We already have a quite packed schedule but if any London hotels with free WiFi would like to get involved, they should contact us by email or via Twitter – we’ll be happy to promote them and further embarass those shortsighted and expensive London hotels which choose to inconvenience their guests with sky-high WiFi charges. Watch this space!
Finally, if you’re about to reserve a London hotel and not sure if it has free WiFi (largely because the charging ones often don’t mention it), just email or tweet us and we’ll be happy to check and let you know the truth!
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Photo credits: Travelodge, The Ritz.
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I don’t understand how expensive London hotels get away with their sky high prices for WiFi. I recently stayed at base2stay Kensington and the free in-room WiFi there was very good.
Mark my words when its all free and one day it will be, this same blog (if it still exists) will whine about how free wifi is crappy and its much better to pay for better quality, because hotels will stop investing in upgrading infrastructure that generates no revenue!!
The customer will have a crappy experience in the long term, when everyone is streaming everything!!
If a hotel thinks it’s OK to give guests a “crappy experience” they’ll simply write about it online and choose somewhere else to stay next time. I know it can be challenging and costly for hotels to create the infrastructure to deliver WiFi but many appear to achieve this more than adequately including an increasing number in the budget and mid-price sectors, so I don’t think the cost argument is very convincing. You seem to miss the point that functioning WiFi is a very basic expectation for hotel guests now on a par with having clean rooms, hot water and a comfy bed.
I am consulting on a project to install wifi in a 4* hotel. To provide adequate coverage it’s £18k capex for the cabling and equipment, £14k per year for a 100Mb dataline, and then £5k p/a for the 5x language helpdesk and enhanced support. Total investment over 3 years in the region of £75k.
Whether this should be free to the guest is a matter for hoteliers to decide. It probably shouldm, in my opinion.
However my point is that the continual comparisons to free wifi in McDonalds is irrelevant.
If you could install a hotel like a McDonalds, do not doubt that hotels would; but that’s not the service they strive for or the same user experience that guests will demand. Think £30 per month for an ADSL line with non-existent SLA’s, and one wireless router. And are there multiple people in McDonalds every evening streaming video content? Oh and if the line should go down, expect it back in about 7-10 days.
Suggesting hotels should not use Twitter and Facebook because they charge for internet access is facile. On this basis hotels should also immediatley cease using email to confirm bookings and shut down their websites.
Thanks GB for engaging with us on this issue.
Do you think a consumer really cares how much you invest in providing a WiFi service, any more than how much it costs to install heating and plumbing? And if it is as prohibitive an investment as you say, how come many independent hotels and groups provide it free while big brands continue to charge?
Frankly, there’s a lot of stuff in hotels that hoteliers seem to consider essential – like plasma screen TVs (who has time to watch TV in a hotel anyway?), iPads, fancy toiletries, flashy art, etc. which may also cost hoteliers tens of thousands of pounds to provide. Personally, I don’t want or need any of those amenities.
But WiFi for most people today is an essential amenity they can’t do without on the road. It should not be classified as a discretionary expense in today’s society. The problem I think is in the mindset of hoteliers in how they determine the “essentials” of a hotel stay versus true discretionary luxuries.
Hotels that charge for WiFi simply have their priorities wrong. Who told them that providing free plasma screen TVs is more important than free WiFi? Judging by online reviews, it certainly wasn’t the average hotel guest. Whether you like it or not, most guests expect free WiFi in a luxury hotel. You can’t fight this expectation which is set by society, by other hotels, even by big mobile companies providing free WiFi across an entire city.
And my point about Twitter and Facebook was that it’s hypocritical to ask guests to reach out to you via those channels while staying at your hotel (which is when they’re most likely to engage) if you’re also asking them to pay you hefty fees while they promote your brand!
I’m still baffled as to why high-end hotels still charge for wifi. I’ve been in five star hotels in other countries like Spain, the US and around Asia where an excellent wifi connection is offered for free. So if these hotels can offer it for free, why can’t others do the same? Having an Internet connection is vital, not only for business people who work from their rooms but for tourists who like to research the destination online (where to go, what to see, opening times, maps or checking in for a flight). I keep hearing about the cost issue but the potential benefits outweigh the cost in my opinion. For instance, I see many hotels creating their own apps these days – guests can download these apps which contain info about the place, events & suggestions from the concierge; in addition, guests can use the app to look up the menu at the hotel’s restaurants, book a table, a room or a spa treatment. It’s a brilliant idea. The hotels that offer these apps don’t charge for wifi (from my experience). To me, this is an example that they understand the value of offering free wifi not only as a service but as a means of engaging a customer and promoting the hotel’s other services. Recouping the cost of offering free wifi is perfectly possible; if only hotels that still charge for wifi would realize this and start being creative.
Thanks for your great comments Keith. Hoteliers who invest so much futile energy in trying to justify WiFi charges are being outpaced in the market by more visionary ones that not only offer free WiFi but leverage it effectively to better promote their hotels.
If hotels are worried about ROI they should look at how offering free WiFi will help them better connect with (and even sell to) their guests.
Rajul, I’m glad I prompted a long response.. it’s always good to debate!
I guess it all comes down to personal opinion and priority; your free wifi over my free plasma. Or Charlie’s free breakfast. Or Mary’s free parking..
Again, to answer the question should it be free, my thoughts are that it probably should.
Another challenge arises that when you make wifi free the usage rates (ie the number of devices connected) quadruples; combine this with the ever increasing demand for bandwidth on individual websites and applications and the demand for bandwidth within the hotel becomes immense, so the cost of bandwidth becomes an upward variable. And you’ve just removed your revenue stream to pay for it.
In an individual hotel this may mean changing from a revenue stream of, say, £50k pa to a cost of £25k. Moving the bottom line by £75k in the wrong direction is never going to be a quick decision, regardless of how many extra room nights the hotel believe they will pick up, or whether they could add an extra £1 or £2 per booking. (With London occupancy rates would they be able to recoup this through extra nights?). And would a chain be willing / able to cover the move that would run to a change of millions?
The debate will continue. I don’t like paying for wifi, but I like a slow or non-functioning service less. And if my already expensive hotel room was £2 per night more I wouldn’t even notice.