Providing Internet Access for Hostel Guests

The paradox of free internet is that it only really works in hostels where not that many people want to use it. We offer free internet, with terminals in every room, but partly due to location and possibly our user base being not totally typical of the true backpacker hostel, they are not in constant use. We only have a 1Mb/s connection so is basically useless for any form of video streaming, except perhaps youtube where you can let it fill the buffer up. Before we went free we were taking in about $1000 a year in revenue from the paid terminal. I decided to sacrifice that to offer the free service. I also felt confident to manage the system myself.

If however I was running a large city hostel that was taking in tens of thousands a year, I'd think very carefully before going down the free avenue. Not only do you lose the revenue, but you suddenly have a large number of people using the system for long hours. So therefore you have to provide many terminals, or they will be unhappy with having to wait for ages to use one. And a lot of them will want to do video streaming. Obviously you could block this, but then they won't be happy about that, as to many people video streaming is their second most used thing after facebook and email. Also if you charge for access then IT support can come out of these charges. If you are not confident or able to do sometimes difficult fixes for things that have gone wrong, IT help will soon add up.

My opinion is that if you run a large city hostel with lots of backpackers, then a reasonably priced internet access (reasonable for your location) is perfectly acceptable for most people. If you have a small hostel, with limited demand, then it might be worth giving it away.

When I was traveling a lot, I would try to find places that had free wifi and I would prefer to pay a little more to get it. Charging for wifi is not just the expense, it's the hassle of having to buy credit, enter passwords etc and then it times out when you might be in the middle of something.

As a traveler as well as a hostel owner (and some time travel journalist and hostel reviewer) I've got a pretty firm opinion on this. Internet, in this day and age should NEVER cost money. Charging for internet and viewing it as a "revenue source" is symptomatic of a greater issue (Hostels that nickel and dime their guests are in general the ones that wind up grumbling when they see their ratings on hostelworld and the like, it makes you look like a hustler). Internet costs so little and the benefits to your customers especially with the portability of data devices such as netbooks and smartphones is tremendous, charging for this just makes you look like a ripoff artist.

If you run Ubuntu on your "terminals" you can use just about any machine with a tolerable amount of RAM and there is nothing to maintain... Who stays in your hostel? YOUNG PEOPLE, and to most young people the free dissemination of information is a given, don't matter how cool your murals are you'll come out on the bottom.

In Our hostel provides free internet terminals and wifi. However I don't think that those that charge for internet access are nickel and diming their guest. Any more than those that charge for guest to do laundry, or use a pool table in the bar, or go on a tour of the city are nickel and diming their guests. To provide a computer (or number of computers in a larger hostel) costs money. There are maintenance issues, hard drives fail, network connections are not always reliable, and even in linux users can mess up the O/S if they are determined. I think free wifi is pretty much expected in hostels these days, but not necessarily a free computer. If you do have a free computer you need some kind of rationing system as well to give everyone some access, or else have enough computers that everyone can use them.

The most important thing to me is that the system works well. It's like internet cafes - I've been to places where the cheapest access is the worst - slow and on ancient computers - people will often pay more for reliable and fast access. To me dissemination of information doesn't mean that there'll be a free computer for you to use everywhere you'll go to.

I pretty much agree with everything you said. We have a skype subscription and give guests free calls to around 40 countries. It's certainly appreciated, and costs about $100, so worth it in my opinion. We also offer free internet computer in room and common room. I'm not sure how much it increases review percentage however - that is very hard to quantify. I am just offering advice to anyone thinking of offering free internet computers in their hostel not to underestimate the cost of doing this especially if a) they are not technically minded themselves and will have to get someone in to repair them, and/or b) they are a large hostel and will need multiple PCs/macs to satisfy demand. On the basic point that we should try and exceed customer expectations, I agree totally.