Hotels Going Broadband

By 2002, 80 percent of hotel rooms should have broadband Internet access, report says.

Lincoln Spector, special to PCWorld.com

Hotels are scrambling to add broadband access to their guest, meeting, and conference rooms, according to a recent report from market research firm Cahners In-Stat Group. The report, "The Wired Room: Hotel Broadband Preference Analysis," is available for $1995--not a price for the casually curious.

Representatives of two hotel chains, Holiday Inn and Hyatt International (which runs Hyatt hotels outside of North America), talked to us about their broadband plans.

Plug and Play

The goal for these hotel chains is plug-and-play connectivity. You connect your notebook's Ethernet interface into a wall socket, boot up, and you're on the Internet. There you can handle your office and personal e-mail (assuming that the company e-mail system is Internet-accessible), research your projects, or listen to MP3s.

Some hotels will offer more. For instance, Hyatt International will offer "cyberconcierges," Web pages with currency exchange rates, local city guides, flight schedules, and other information travelers will find useful.

Where you have computers, you need tech support. Both Hyatt International and Holiday Inn plan to offer around-the-clock support, for the most part contracted out to the companies setting up their systems.

How much will the service cost you? According to the In-Stat report, some hotels will charge by the minute, others by the day, and still others with a single fee for the entire stay. Both Hyatt International and Holiday Inn plan to charge by the day. Final prices aren't set. Hyatt is recommending that hotels charge between $9.95 and $19.95 a day. Les Gable, Holiday Inn's director of global hotel technology, believes that "the market seems to be going to a $9.95-per-day charge." Yet representatives of both companies believe that the service will be free of charge within a few years.

How Long Must We Wait?

Right now the service is still pretty much unavailable at any price, but no one expects that to last very long. Amy Helland, an In-Stat research analyst, estimates that the number of wired hotel rooms will "still be under 50 percent by the end of 2000, but if you're looking for that service you'll be able to find it. By 2002, 80 percent should have it."

But Hyatt International and Holiday Inn are in a bigger hurry. According to Gebhard Rainer, vice president of hotel finance and systems for Hyatt International, "All of our hotels will have it in every room" by May of 2001.

The hurry is understandable. If a hotel wants to attract business clientele, broadband access soon will be not a luxury but an absolute necessity.