All that is fine but you missed one thing. On the mainland you have
competition, this is Hawaii, home of the monopoly and groups that act as a
monopoly.
I have been dealing with that for going on 10 years now. I only wish we
would come out of our third world attitude and join the rest of the mainland
in a truly free economy.
As far as the politicians, they "own" everything. Did you see the news this
morning? Cal Kawamoto, the traffic cam senator, under investigation by the
FBI and IRS. Nothing happens in this town unless you "know" (read $$$)
someone.
Beer? I'd love too. I can tell you some stories about this place too. I
don't know much about the Hotel ownershuip structure but I know plenty about
the commercial real estate industry.
MD
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "LUAU" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 1:06 AM
Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Maddog wrote:
And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises
since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left. It will
change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business
requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination.
People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going
free wireless.
Good point.
I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels driving
it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it.
Buy me beer sometime, and I'll tell you the tales. Things like the VP of
Marketing for Wyndham wanting to invent a way
to project ads on the surface of water in your toilet bowl. (My
response, "You want a heads-down display?" didn't win me any friends that
day.) Same guy wanted to charge a percentage of the contents protected
by the in-room safe.
Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway, change
will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO.
Actually, I'd bet that the first real downturn will bring a scad of "free
wifi" from the hotels as they panic, especially in the lower- end chains.
The primary metric for hotel management is REVPAR, (REVenue Per Available
Room), and the primary inputs to REVPAR are occupancy and the rack rate.
As soon as a lack of Internet services (and most people would rather
connect via WiFi) is perceived by hotel management as a primary (or even
secondary) cause for a drop in occupancy or having to discount the rack
rate (in order to fill the rooms), it will be installed, and it will be
free-to-guest. I saw this happen first in the extended stay space,
where the guests would preferentially book rooms where they had a T1
connected to in-room Ethernet, and then would stay where it was "free to
guest" (bundled into the price of the room).
Then Wyndham started giving away IP networking if you were part of their
affinity program in an effort to attract folks away from Marriot and
Starwood. It worked, so Marriot went free-to-guest in those segments
where they had to compete (Courtyard, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites,
Fairfield Inn and Towne Place Suites). Wingate and other chains followed
suit. Hilton turned up their "Garden Inn" chain (as free to guest).
Then LaQuinta (who had been refusing to even pay attention to offering
Internet access) went and installed in every hotel (chain-wide) and
turned it all on ... for free. Why? Because their hand was forced.
Yes, you still pay in the higher-end brands, but most of the people who
stay in these hotels aren't the kind who live-and-die by access to their
email/Exchange and back-end (VPN-protected) applications.
And, oh, btw, I managed to keep all of Wayport's airport installations
(some of which cost nearly $500,000 to install) as 'free' for the longest
time. It was easier to treat it as a marketing expense than to make the
changes to the billing system to accommodate how the airport authorities
wanted to 'split' the meager fees. And yes, we could see real results
in folks who used the (free) WiFi at the airport in-turn preferentially
staying at Wayport hotels. Then we got the new Neanderthal CEO who
insisted that the world would not "go free" or "go 802.11" (despite clear
evidence to the contrary) and the rest is history. His "big deal" now
is WiFi in McDonalds, and that deal has several provisions which allow
McDonalds to turn it on 'for free' when they so desire.
I'd love to see a free model that could make it here, I guess I am just
too skeptical or cynical or something like that. Besides even if the
hotels come around, you have the politicians to deal with!
The politicians don't own the hotels, so they have little say.
Part of what makes dealing with hotels complex is that you have several
parties to deal with. You have people who own hotels (REITs), people who
manage hotels (Benchmark, Interstate, Outrigger, WestCoast), people who
brand hotels (Hilton, Marriott) and people who build hotels. Sometimes
one party will fill more than one role. You've also got they guys in the
back-rooms of the REITs who are literally playing "Monopoly" flipping
hotels in and out of the portfolio.
Moreover, it costs money to be able to charge money. Shall I wax
eloquent about PMS interfaces, credit card charge-backs, and the size of
the customer support department you need to be able to deal with several
thousand locations? Want to know how small those (and other) issues get
when you >don't charge<?
And yes, hotel managers are a capricious bunch.
Just to keep the linux content 'up', Wayport used an on-property (custom
debian distro) linux machine (we called it a 'nmd') at every location,
and still does. You put 1,000 PeeCees in the world in wildly dispersed
locations, with every one responsible for carrying money back to the
mothership and see how you start to look at the problem.
Then start to deal with 40 or more Windows boxes that you've *never seen
before* attached to the hotel network every night, all with their own
unique collection of spyware and viruses, and some of whom are piloted by
... well, lets just call them 'bad actors' who are out to damage the
network, send spam, or download things that are prohibited, which result
in subpoenas from various law enforcement agencies (up to and including
the FBI). (*)
It turns out that having the source code, and being able to make changes
to it (fixing bugs, changing behavior, etc), and then distribute these
changes easily (and at no charge) is a "Good Thing" (tm).
Jim
(*) Back to the subject, if you don't bill, you don't have to keep the
information around to justify the billing, and, as a result, the FBI (and
other LEAs) know to just not bother to ask.
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