Any hotel with expensive WiFi charges has to be wary of how quickly it can get blacklisted by the world's most influential bloggers.
London Hotels Insight launched its "Free the WiFi!" campaign a couple of months ago as part of a broader initiative being led across the blogosphere and on Twitter. We were amazed by the fantastic response.
This article sums up what some other high-profile bloggers have been saying to give this campaign fresh momentum for 2010.
I won't repeat the arguments for free WiFi here: I refer you instead to my open letter to the hotel industry. As you'll see from the comments underneath that post, it attracted a fair bit of flak from hoteliers!
Here are some links to influential fellow bloggers arguing passionately in favour of free WiFi:
- James Ellis is the mover and shaker who really kick-started this campaign. Here's his most recent free WiFi round up.
- Keith Jenkins of Velvet Escape has not only written about free WiFi on his own travel blog but has also been actively posting comments all over the web. Thanks Keith for your leadership and support!
- Sarah Lee is leading a smart free WiFi campaign on her own initiative. She's made a brilliant Twitter list to promote hotels offering free WiFi. Read what she has written on the issue on her blog here and here.
- John Williams runs a site on European budget travel. He's another passionate advocate of free hotel WiFi through his Twitter account and I strongly recommend you follow him.
- Darren Cronian is one of the world's most influential travel bloggers who runs the popular Travel Rants blog. He hosts some excellent debates and has also contributed his own tuppence worth on free hotel WiFi.
- Frequent traveller Karen Bryan of Top Travel Content Europe has been working with me to persuade the budget hotel chains in particular to see the light. She runs the leading Europe a la Carte travel blog.
- Christopher Elliott owns the proudly independent Elliott dot org travel blog. He kindly featured the London Hotels Insight free WiFi campaign recently. Christopher has been advocating free hotel WiFi for a number of years now ahead of the curve as he is on most issues.
- The Gadling travel blog is one of the most popular and respected travel blogs and has also been a leading proponent of free WiFi for some time.
- Hotel Chatter recently named and shamed London hotels which charge heavily for WiFi which attracted lots of support.
More hotels are realising that WiFi is an essential commodity that must be included in the room rate
The above only represents a microcosm of the strong feeling worldwide against rip-off hotel WiFi charges. Just search the always-popular #FreeWiFi hashtag on Twitter and you'll get an immediate idea of this.
My question to any "dinosaur" hotels that continue to charge for WiFi is this: can't you see the power of having the world's most influential bloggers and tweeters on your side rather than against you?
Rest assured that we won't stop campaigning until all hotel companies from budget chains like Travelodge to established global brands like Hilton and InterContinental have finally seen the light!
Please follow London Hotels Insight on Twitter or any of the blogs mentioned above to stay bang up to date on this important campaign.
Rajul
London Hotels Insight
www.londonhotelsinsight.com