Travelers who highly value cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages are often the same people who expect hotels to offer quality free Wi-Fi.
To find out its readers Wi-Fi hotel experiences, USA Today surveyed over 1,300 of its readers the last week of June.
66 percent of the respondents said that they are OK with their hotels free Wi-Fi. Only 18 percent complained that free hotel Wi-Fi is often slow.
Hotels are facing a conundrum when it comes to what type of Wi-Fi service they should offer in the future. On the one hand, hotels are seeing their Internet service bill rising exponentially because so many of its guests travel with multiple mobile devices and stream videos. In just nine months in 2011 the average data usage per hotel visit increased 50 percent. On the other hand, the vast majority of hotel guests have expressed an unwillingness to pay for Wi-Fi service, even if it is a premium, faster version.
Other respondent results were:
17 percent noted hotel Internet is always reliable.
31 percent said such Wi-Fi is good for basic tasks but not for streaming videos.
18 percent noted that hotel Wi-Fi is slow, but said that they were not bothered by the speed.
26 percent had experienced hotel Wi-Fi failing completely more than once.
Only 8 percent said that they would be willing to pay for higher quality hotel Wi-Fi.
In response to escalating Internet costs, some hotels and chains are experimenting with tiered pricing options. www.cheapfares.com