Expensive Hotel = Expensive Broadband
For the next couple of nights I am staying at the Grand Hyatt down on Union Square in The City–what people from the Bay Area call San Francisco. Now usually I don’t stay in such nice places, but I am taking a class in this hotel.
The last couple of times I was in The City, I didn’t need to go too far to find an open WiFi access point. When I opened up my iBook in the Grand Hyatt, no WiFi anywhere. Okay, fine, so I plug in my travel WiFi access point to the hotel’s Ethernet. Sure enough, I get connected–for the price of $9.95 a day.
In many “nicer” hotels I have stayed in, it seems the broadband access costs money. That’s my experience and I’m sure Andy “Stay Connected” Abramson will probably back me up on this. However, it seems the hotels that aren’t as nice offer free broadband.
Last summer, I stayed for a few nights in a Holiday Inn Express in Calera, AL. Not exactly the nicest place I’ve stayed and it might as well be in Timbuktu. But the whole hotel had open WiFi available for free. The hotel I usually stay in when I am in the Bay Area doesn’t have WiFi, but they offer free Internet service. I just hook up my portable WiFi access point and off I go. Most of the “cheaper” hotels I drive by in my travels advertise Free Internet access.
Can someone explain to me why the nicer hotels charge so much for something that the lower end hotels give away?
