Despite his belief that technology should be treated as an extension of the guest experience, Mark Kendall, vice president of the Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals Asia Pacific, is against the idea that hotels should provide free Internet access to guests.

“The challenge with broadband is, it’s the cost of service. If it’s a three star hotel and it offers unsecured bandwidth, then user beware. But if a CEO is staying in a five star hotel, then he expects some level of security and the level of infrastructure that is required to support these services costs the hotel.”


He said some hotels were considering the wireless.sg model (the free wireless service found in prime locations in Singapore) whereby you get a minimum service – say bandwidth of 128K – for free and if you want extra, you pay.

“Business travellers form 75% of the business for hotels in Singapore and their RFPs with corporates have to include broadband so that’s already being removed.”

Kendall said people also tended to download more than they travel – be it pornography or illegal downloads.

More and more though, customers are demanding free Internet as a right of travel.

Not Kendall though. He said, “As a business traveller, I don’t demand it. Most business travellers expense it anyway so they don’t care “as long as it’s not coming out of my pocket?”

But what about entrepreneurs and SMEs who may not be able to “expense” it to someone else’s pockets – people such as Carl Griffth, a design consultant living in Singapore (above)?

“For me, I expect Internet and I expect it to be free,” Griffith said. “It’s like towels, I use one everyday but I don’t pay for it. So if I don’t pay, will they give me used towels instead?

“Now if I ordered dancing girls – which may not be considered normal service – then yes, I expect to pay for it.”

Featured image credit (flat long shadow hotel icon set vector/illustration) : iStock