How to drive customers away and alienate people…
- Posted by Steve on April 30th, 2007 filed in Food and beverage, Homes and housing, Retail, Services
Opportunity: doing the opposite of these guys… and make it easy for customers to give their money to you in return for real value.
Just to reinforce the importance of free internet in your café or other customer-centric areas (see Cristi’s post)…I will give you a quick story about our experience in the Hilton Metropole in London.
The hotel has a great location, nice sized rooms, but idiotic broadband wireless. I wanted to have wireless or cable in my room and wireless in the lobby and café areas downstairs. To get this, I would have to pay the equivalent of 22 Euros for Broadband for my room… and not even for 24 hours… this was charged from 12 noon to 12 noon so… assuming the very likely chance on a business trip you were not waiting inside your hotel room at 12:01 in the afternoon to access your broadband… you would get considerably less than 24 hours.
In addition, my 22 Euros payment would also not get me wireless access down in the lobby. No… that would require another 20 Euros and requiring registration with another provider. And… this second wireless service wouldn’t (of course) also reach my room so I was looking at a combined 42 Euros to have less than 24 hours of broadband coverage I wanted (and which didn’t seem an unusual request in 2007).
I realize the hotels are trying to capitalize on their captive audiences… But in line with CNN’s Richard Quest complaining about the 42 Euro breakfast in Rome’s Westin… at times you have to call extortion what it is. And…to keep my free market credentials intact… I am not simply complaining so much about the (outrageous…but charge what you will) price. I am complaining about the complication and awful value proposition of the entire affair.
Now… I am someone who appreciates the value of time over money. I like to wake up and check my email first thing in the morning for any overseas excitement.
So, what did I do? I went to the Costa coffee shop next door which provides free wireless and used the money I saved to buy a cup of coffee. Sure people thought I looked funny in my bathrobe and slippers…but…(o.k. not really). I am also quite sure the time it took me to pack up my laptop and go to the coffee shop would have just been spent trying to register yet again for another paid wireless service had I used the hotel’s service
And soon… all of my colleagues were at Costa….using free wireless and ordering food and drinks….along with quite a few other Hilton refugees.
Written by Steve
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:02 am
I think that the tax for “wireless Internet access” won’t last for long time….and the hotels know this that is why they are charging as much possible as they still can. What they really do not get is that most of the people who would need Internet access are the ones who travel for business purposes. This type of customers are the ones who most likely have to come back again. If I know how difficult and expensive is to get Internet acces I would definetely not consider Hilton any more while looking for accomodation in London.
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:56 am
This is all the more ridiculous considering how inexpensive it is for hotels to provide the wifi access.
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I think either Conrad Hilton or Paris Hilton is selecting the hotel’s internet connectivity strategy.