Free Wi-Fi Reigns, But Wanes as Top Hotel Amenity

Global travellers’ desire for free Wi-Fi is still the number one amenity when choosing a hotel for both leisure and business stays, but it is slowly declining according to the latest research from Hotels.com.

Highlights of the research:

• Complimentary Wi-Fi is the top factor in choosing a hotel for leisure stays (30%), as compared to 34% in 2013. Canadian travellers ranked it slightly higher than the global average at 36%; no surprise considering the country has topped the list of highest Internet usage worldwide.
• 50% of respondents said free Wi-Fi is their must-have when travelling for business, down from 56% two years ago.
• Free Wi-Fi is the tech amenity 60% of respondents wish would become standard at all hotels this year, 6% lower than in 2013. With the increased availability of free public Wi-Fi hotspots and enhanced mobile data plans, travellers appear to have lessened their reliance on hotel Wi-Fi.
• Free breakfast is once again the second must-have amenity for leisure travellers (21%) and third for business travellers (12%), who ranked proximity to mass transit, restaurants and shops ahead of a free meal.
• In-room, high-end coffee makers or espresso machines are travellers’ favourite modern in-room amenity (23%). For Canadians, this was closely followed by wired rooms and Smartphone docking stations.
• 33% of respondents say complimentary bottled water is the simple amenity they want in all hotel rooms.
• 24% of global travellers say minibars aren’t worth the hype and 17% say they go unused. For Canadians, anything ending with “butler” wasn’t a crowd favourite. These included sun, sleep and bath butlers.
• Phones get no love: bathroom phones are the most unused item (22%) and cordless phones only got 1% of the vote as the simple amenity wanted in hotel rooms.