- Image by Roo Reynolds via Flickr
We’ve never been able to understand why the more expensive hotels charge for wi-fi and the less expensive offer it free, especially when those same hotels are trying to attract business travelers, who want to get work done. The simple answer, of course, is that they can. Many business travelers are booking less expensive hotels, even if their employers will allow them to pay more. The estimate is 40% of hotels charge. In defense, with no more revenue for gauging people for telephone calls, they need a replacement.
USAToday has a great table of hotel chains that do and do not charge, which can be found here. When we can, we’ll just pick a good hotel that gives us what we need. You can also scout nearby places to check email, such as bookstore, coffee houses, etc that may offer free wi-fi.
For another alternative, we recently field-tested Rovair. The Rovair model is a rather simple one. They offer rental by the day of a cellular modem. They offer it in USB, PC Card, and MiFi wireless hotspot form. It took us a while to fully understand how they calculate their day rate. Essentially, the more you buy, the lower the price is. You do not have to use all of the days you buy consecutively, and they expire after a year.
We used the Rovair-On-Demand service, which is for people who already own a cellular modem. We bought a cheap older Verizon USB modem on Ebay, and were able to activate it in a few minutes. When we had technical problems during the initial activation, they had Verizon contact us to troubleshoot. By owning your own modem, you eliminate the time it takes to ship it to you and the deposit for that card.
We bought ten days for $9.40 a day. Not quite as good as the lowest price if you buy 30 days…$5.95, but something we could live with if we didn’t like it. We were told the $5.95 rate is only available through Sprint, so let’s focus on Verizon. Let’s compare that to Verizon’s new prepaid day rates….$15 a day, $30 a week(comes to roughly $4.29 a day), $50 a month(Roughly $1.66 a day). The second issue is data caps. Rovair offers 1GB a week, prorated for less than a week. Verizon offers 75mb for 1 day, 250mb in a week, or 500mb in a month.
Ultimately, Rovair-on-Demand offered good customer service, a pricing plan we could live with, and prices lower or comparable to the price for wi-fi at most hotels that charge($10-15 a day). Rovair-On-Demand does say it isn’t for people who only use it a couple of times a year, but we don’t think they factored in cheap old Ebay modems. We like owning our own equipment and being able to activate at a moments notice. They, in fact, told us that even though they say 24 hours to activate, with the On-Demand, they might be able to get you up, if needed and if they are available, in minutes. Just remember to program their number into your phone, because we did suffer an outage in the middle of our service time. It was in the middle of the night, and it did take them until morning to get back to us. They have support from 8AM to 10PM EST.
The above may all become moot if you have a smartphone with a data plan. Verizon and other companies have offered tethering options to tie your phone into your computer for limited use, but the charges on this do not seem reasonable for what they are offering.
You can opt for the easiest choice…doing without. But who wants to do that?
(Portions of this post originally appeared in the Flight Wisdom blog.)
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- Hotel Wi-Fi: Don’t Pay – Stay Elsewhere (flightwisdom.com)
