On Jun 7, 2006, at 6:05 AM, Maddog wrote:
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've only been here 2 years, but I still find this "its different
here, give up" thing irksome.
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.
Similar things happen on the mainland.
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.
Kawamoto has been in trouble before. Rod Haraga is in-trouble too,
but then, the current national administration is looting the treasury
and I don't hear many complaining about >that<, either.
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.
I'm 'free' starting Friday for about two weeks (though I've got a
quick back-n-forth trip to LA in there.)
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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