Wireless Hotspots wildly priced – operating profits at 13.000 percent

  • Jon Lund 

Imagine if you stayed at a hotel, turned on the TV in your room, and discovered the use of television wasn’t included in your stay, and that you, in order to watch the 9 o’clock news, had to pay an additional 5 euros.

That is, for half an hour.

Want to see more? Of course that won’t cost you 10 bucks an hour. Nope – the hotel offers you a “good deal”: You can have a full 24 hour availability for only 20 euros.

I bet you’d feel cheated if that happened to you. And of course it doesn’t. Basic TV’s for free at all hotels.

But the situation holds true for another service at hotels these days: If you want to connect to the internet, this is what it costs.

Why? Because its very expensive for the hotel to set up the network? Hardly! At home I have broadband ADSL internet access, supporting my households 4 computers. That costs me less that 20 euros a month equalling 15 cents per computer pr. day! Assuming these costs also apply to hotels, this gives hotels an operating profit at over 13.000 – thirteen thousand – percent. 13.000.
(Do you dare calculate the profits on the halfhourly priced packages? Profit here are around astonishing 160.000 percent)

This is simply not decent. Why am I being robbed, just because I act like a normal 2005-professional, carrying my laptop with me when travelling? Only reason: because hotel-managers are completely out of touch with the priorities of their customers.

Not only hotels are crooks however. Airports apply the same pricing policies. In this case it’s actually worse: The more delay, that is, the poorer a job the airports does at what its supposed to be doing: getting people up flying, the more half-hour 160.000 percent operating profit internet access they’re able to sell.

Enough of this: charge me all right for using your hotspots. I’d be more than happy to cover the actual costs – I’d even think it would be OK to pay a little extra for the service. A little.
But stop your daylight thievery. Make me enjoy your services. Stop making me feel like a fool.

PS. At least one chain of hotels have grasped what this is all about. Radisson SAS offers free wireless internet access at hotels throughout Europe, Middle-east and Africa.