SURVEY: What’s More Important Than Hot Water, Breakfast and Parking for Hotel Visitors?

In a recent survey of hotel guests, 70% of Irish people said they are now ignoring the TV in their hotel room, and choosing to stream content through services such as Netflix on their own laptops, tablets and smartphones. Irish tourists and business travellers said that reliable Wi-Fi is more important than hot water, breakfast and parking. According to the survey undertaken by Wi-Fi service provider Bitbuzz; 70% of people would forego having a kettle in their room in order to have reliable Wi-Fi; 20% of people would go without breakfast; whilst 36% would ditch the TV. To 5% of people Wi-Fi is more important than hot water during a hotel stay. Over half of all people said the last time they stayed in a hotel in Ireland, the Wi-Fi was slow (31%) or of a poor quality (25%). 62% of respondents said they would pay for fast and reliable Wi-Fi. 28% of respondents said social media is the main activity they use hotel Wi-Fi for, with 23% of respondents using Wi-Fi to check their emails. Shane Deasy, Managing Director of Bitbuzz said: “As a Wi-Fi operator with a presence in many hotel rooms, we wanted to ask what hotel guests wanted of their Wi-Fi. Over the last year, we have noticed a shift from guests watching the television to streaming their own content on a laptop or iPad, but were surprised it was as high as 70%.  Some of the other findings are more surprising – people are willing to pay in order to have reliable Wi-Fi that can support their browsing needs. We are continually upgrading our network and providing more high speed fibre optic connections to an increasing number of hotels across the UK and Ireland.”