More hotel guests want to unwire

When readers of the New Yorker opened their magazines last September, they got a surprise: a Zagat mini-guide of hotels and restaurants that offer Wi-Fi access.

By Drew Limsky, Special for USA TODAY

Otherwise, the entries were identical to those in the long-form 2003 Zagat Survey, the opinions of respondents preciously quoted as usual: the New York restaurant Fifty Seven Fifty Seven remains "timelessly sophisticated." You have to "hold on to your wallet" when dining at the Carlyle Hotel, and the lobby of the Four Seasons in San Francisco is still "gorgeous."

"Unpack. Unwind. Unwire," is the tag line accompanying the special-edition brochure, which was underwritten by Intel, which created the Centrino chip that enables laptops to connect to the Internet.

That Zagat is tracking Wi-Fi hot spots is indicative of how much they have grown in recent years — and how important Wi-Fi is to travelers. Today, hot spots can be found at hotels, restaurants, pay telephones, convenience stores, malls, sports arenas, train stations, truck stops and marinas.

From McDonald’s to Starbucks, from midrange hotels like Wyndham Hotels to luxury chains like the Four Seasons, you can unwire.

There’s Wi-Fi in the art deco lobby of New York’s Carlyle Hotel, Wi-Fi in the cabanas at the La Playa Resort in Naples, Fla. At the Four Seasons in Austin, executives can surf the Net by the lakeside pool. "Wi-Fi is critical for (technology) events," says tech conference planner John Meyer, who organized a gathering in Austin. "It’s in the conference areas, in the ballrooms, at the pool. It’s great."

When Wayport, the world’s largest wireless access provider for hotels and airports, set up Wyndham Hotels with Wi-Fi in 2000, Wyndham became one of the first hotel brands to offer the new technology. Currently the chain offers access in more than 150 hotels.

"At the beginning, we were in sales mode," says Wyndham Chief Technology Officer Mark Hedley. "Now we find ourselves responding to customer demand more."

Wayport, which also installed wireless in the Four Seasons, Hilton, Loews and Marriott chains, saw the majority of its hotels double their usage rates in the first six months of 2003. Starbucks partnered with T-Mobile in 1999 and now offers broadband Wi-Fi in about 2,600 locations. Customers can either subscribe to T-Mobile for about $30 a month or buy time in by-the-minute blocks. (Free day passes are also available.) Starbucks gives customers something extra: Users can download music that’s custom-designed for the chain.

Kinko’s has installed T-Mobile Wi-Fi in about 170 stores, and by April every Kinko’s will have a hot spot, says Jeff Heyman, a company vice president.

Because Wi-Fi works best in open spaces, small rooms and steel pillars can compromise performance. That’s why most Wi-Fi-accessible hotels offer a combination of wired Internet service in the guestrooms and Wi-Fi in the common areas. Wyndham CFO Hedley says the chain is outfitting guest rooms of new properties with Wi-Fi: "That’s where the future is."

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Where to Wi-Fi

Plug your address into http://www.wifinder.com to find hot spots near and far.

A comprehensive list of wireless U.S. libraries, compiled by librarian Bill Drew of SUNY Morrisville College, can be found at http://www.people.morrisville.edu/~drewwe/wireless/wirelesslibraries.htm.

Click http://www.jiwire.com for global hot spots. Prices included.

Log on to the Alliance’s zone finder http://www.wi-fizone.org to locate hot spots in 50 countries.

Browse http://www.wififreespot.com for a nationwide listing of free hot spots, plus marinas.

Search thousands of listings, including hotel chains Four Seasons, Hilton and Marriott at http://www.boingo.com/search.html.

Source: USA TODAY research

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Loews Hotels, which now offers Wi-Fi in a dozen of its properties, is considering making Wi-Fi free to guests. As technology improves, Loews is also toying with adding hot spots to guestroom floors.

"Two to three years down the road, wireless will overtake wired," says Tony Del Mastro, the tech manager for Loews Hotels.

A few hotels, such as the high-end Adolphus in Dallas (the jewel in Wayport’s crown), are completely wireless. Guest usage has climbed from 12.5% to 25% in one year, says Kevin Henry, the hotel’s resident manager.

And installation is getting easier. Firetide, a Hawaii-based manufacturer of wireless products, can now install Wi-Fi in a 40-story hotel in two days instead of two months. Tareq Hoque, Firetide’s co-founder and board member, says that his company reduces the cost, time and complexity associated with installment by using mesh networking, a technology developed by the military for battlefield applications.

At a high-tech demo conference in San Diego, in front of an audience of industry big shots like Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, Firetide employees went into full battle mode, rigging up the 250,000 square-foot ground floor of a Hilton hotel in six minutes. "The response was outstanding," Hoque says. "We walked away with the Demo God Award."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-11-17-wifi_x.htm