It’s been a while since I traveled and being back on the road I can see that things are exactly where I left them … pay for everything you do and if possible make the consumer pay again.
I’m carrying my laptop, iPhone, Blackberry and iPad. All of these devices have wifi and I’m used to using them together throughout my days and evenings. On the plane down I was able to connect via GoGoInflight which was great as I stayed current on a few work-streams. The problem was I wanted to use both my iPhone and iPad and GoGo forces the connection through a captcha which when submitted disconnects the other device. I was on a short 2hour flight yet GoGo still charged their normal rate …
At my hotel, the Hilton charges for wifi as well (so lame for hotels to do this btw) and again I can only connect a single device. I’m not confident that switching my connection between devices won’t result in a second charge so I’m not even taking the chance. Instead I’m relying on the 3G services as needed …
I used to travel with a travel router to hack around this BS. I honestly forget that piece of gear this round. At a business hotel during the week, why not just assume we all need to be online and build it into the price of the room and offer it up as a free service? Perception changes a lot here. I tweeted over to GoGo regarding the second device function and am anxiously awaiting some form of a response.
If this was a personal trip btw there’d be even more reason for multiple devices as bringing my family along would only increase the number of needed connections.