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Marriott and InterContintal certainly aren’t alone in their rapid deployment of high-speed Internet access. Starwood Hotels & Resorts, whose hotel chains include Four Points, Sheraton, St. Regis, Westin, and W Hotels, is in the process of installing 750 Wi-Fi hotspots at its properties to allow its guests to connect wirelessly to the Internet.

Mark Ricci, the corporate public relations manager at Starwood Hotels & Resorts, acknowledges that his company’s program is designed to help it head off similar efforts from Marriott and others. “Our Four Points by Sheraton hotels offer free HSIA [high-speed Internet access] in order to compete with other midlevel hotels that offer the same type of package,” he said. Although the company hasn’t made a decision yet on permanent pricing, right now accessing the service is completely free to hotel guests.

The race is definitely on to provide as many properties with high-speed access as possible. Tom Seddon, InterContinental’s senior vice president for American brand performance, explained the reasoning behind the company’s rapid deployment. “When people travel, they use their hotel room as an extension of their office environment and expect this type of technology to be available so they can travel and work comfortably.”

The Wi-Fi Factor
For now, hotels that offer free broadband access have a leg up on the competition, but in just 2 or 3 years, business travelers will no longer have to search far and wide for a connection. They’ll be able to piggyback on an existing Wi-Fi connection that happens to reach their room in often-crowded city centers.

Realizing that unauthorized free Wi-Fi access is a reality, hotspot service operators Wayport and Boingo Wireless have installed high-speed Wi-Fi connections in more than 400 hotels over the past year, and that number is set to increase substantially, thanks to nearly 600 new partnership agreements between hotels and these operators.

Some of these locations are free, but, according to Wayport CEO Dave Vucina, business travelers know that there’s a value attached to connecting through an established provider. “Customers, particularly business travelers, understand that they are paying for a high-quality service in a hotel that offers them consistency in performance, full VPN support, security and abuse management, full technical support, et cetera, which they may not be getting on a free network.”

Intercontinental’s broadband rollout at its Crowne Plaza hotels should be complete by the end of this year, along with free high-speed Internet access in all guest rooms and some public and meeting areas in Holiday Inn’s 1,000 hotels and Holiday Inn Express’ 1,200 hotels.

With all the hotel chains controlled by Marriott, Starwood, and InterContinental now offering free high-speed Internet services, it’s only a matter of time until all hotels find they have to do the same in order to compete. And for business travelers, that’s very good news indeed.