Hotels must accept that Wi-Fi is king: Column

Can you imagine checking into your next hotel and discovering your room doesn't have a television? Or that you'll have to pay for TV each day, though the reception might not always work? What if the hotel let you watch all the free TV you want, as long as you watched it in the lobby with your fellow guests? You wouldn't even put down your suitcase before walking out to find another hotel.

While TV is still a hotel room staple, Wi-Fi service is often treated as a luxury item that you must pay extra to access, if it's even available at all. Business travelers in particular are quite sensitive to these frustrations. Nothing disrupts my hotel stays more often than Wi-Fi that isn't ubiquitous, fast and, if not free, at least reasonably priced.

In terms of guest priorities, Wi-Fi is the new cable. A recent survey in Fortune cited in-room technology or Wi-Fi as business travelers' most-valued amenity. A Hotels.com crowdsourced poll last year said free Wi-Fi is the most-preferred hotel property amenity among U.S. travelers. And one survey after another reports that expense and speed of Wi-Fi are business travelers' biggest frustrations.

Some hotels do offer "business centers," usually rooms off the lobby with several connected, public computers and printers. But I carry my laptop or tablet with me wherever I go, because I want to work in the comfort of my room on the privacy of my own devices. And I'm not alone – USA Todayreported that 84% of business travelers prefer to work in their own rooms. And even worse than ignoring its guests' preferences, Marriott International's Gaylord Opryland Hotel was recently hit with a $600,000 fine for preventing people from using personal Wi-Fi, while charging as much as $1,000 per device to use the hotel's network.

Savvy travelers can use sites like HotelWiFiTest.com to check the availability and speed of a hotel's wireless system before they book. But it's inexplicable to me that any hotel, much less a hotel that caters to business travelers, condones a bad wireless connection or charges absurd fees to access it. Too many of the top-end hotels essentially price gouge their guests with exorbitant Wi-Fi fees, because they know the busy, time-crunched, sleep-deprived business traveler – who may be expensing the entire trip anyway – will pay them.

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The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets, fast becoming the business traveler's and tourist's Internet devices of choice, means hotels need to step up their game when it comes to offering fast Wi-Fi. The ARIA Resort & Casino, for example, now bills itself as one of the most advanced wired buildings in the world. In response to continual demands for faster internet, ARIA just this year installed a more robust Wi-Fi system. Now more guests than ever can access the hotel's Wi-Fi, even if they're going online in the same area. The hotel's Wi-Fi access is part of the reason we selected ARIA to house our new C Space – a central headquarters curated for the marketing, advertising, content and creative communities – at the International CES^® this year.

In a recent profile, Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta explained that his hotels "need to be relevant to a broad array of customers," and that means getting rid of some of the old standbys – think evening turndown service – to meet guest expectations. He says the typical big-city guest doesn't care about these offerings anymore, and they're especially expensive for the hotel to provide. I don't claim to know the cost of good in-room Wi-Fi for the average hotel, but surely eliminating unneeded services would free resources to invest in a reliable, reasonably-priced system.

Precisely because in-room Wi-Fi is so important to today's travelers, there should be a measurement standard for the industry. A hotel's Wi-Fi service should be rated on three criteria: in-room availability, speed and price. For instance, a Gold Standard Wi-Fi hotel could have in-room availability, a speed of at least 10Mbps and complimentary service. But a Silver Standard Wi-Fi hotel might have in-room availability and 10Mpbs connection speed, but charge $10/day.

Developing and deploying such a measurement standard would provide an invaluable service to tourists and business travelers alike who require good Wi-Fi during every hotel stay. We could easily narrow our hotel choices based on the priority of connectivity, rather than gambling as we do now. It's time for hotels to accept that Wi-Fi is a staple of modern travel – just as important to their guests as a comfortable bed and a quiet room.

Gary Shapiro is president of the Consumer Electronics Association, the trade association representing consumer electronics companies, and author ofThe Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream.

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