One of the most frustrating things for travellers in New Zealand is the lack of accessible free wireless internet. I think it is an obvious opportunity for tourism operators, particularly accommodation, to turn this around and make it easy for their customers to be online. It is actually quite embarrassing that New Zealand is so backward with infrastructure to provide this freely to domestic and international travellers.
For the cafes, motels, hotels, B&B’s and so on that currently do offer their guests free wireless internet access – good on you! I hope you promote this service strongly and get more business as a result. For those that don’t, do it now – it should be part of your service and built into your rates, don’t annoy your customers by charging them extra.
Let’s get our travellers online as much as possible so they can share their experiences with others easily and promote New Zealand for us – it’s obvious isn’t it?
Michelle I couldnt agree more. After working and travelling through the UK and Europe for the past year I know when I booked a Hotel..unless they had free wireless I didnt bother.
I can say that there were a few hotels that missed out on my wonderful company because of their “meaness”.
I have just been in Vienna, Budapest, Prague,Slovakia, Greece and Italy and everywhere I went had to pay $6 an hour for internet. In New Zealand we have to pay high prices to provide it. It is fair enough to recoup some costs and have another source of income. To Michelle, I think Voila is a great provider of secure wireless at very reasonable cost and you only pay for what you actually provide to the guests. So if no one wants it you don’t pay .
Interesting Thanks Sally. As a business owner I can understand the desire to recoup costs, but as a traveller I always look for accommodation that provides it for free as I prefer not to pay extra and don’t want the hassle of setting up a special account, login and password to get online. I would expect that offering it free attracts a lot more business and therefore more than pays for itself?
Yes I agree, nothing annoys a traveler than having to pay for their internet connection. At the motels that I ran, it was standard to offer free internet, the only advice I would give is to cap the usage, so some drongo, doesn’t spend all night downloading crap and using up all your band width (had it happen a few times)
Thanks Carl, is there any particular internet service provider/s you’d recommend for moteliers and other tourism operators that make it cost effective to supply free wireless internet?
This is a problem everywhere. There is lots of wi-fi available, but too many places still charge too much for it.