Unspun

More of people who don’t get it where WiFi or internet connections are concerned (see
WiFi and short-sightedness rant here). I am sitting in my room at the Novotel Semarang. It looks like an efficient business hotel. Clean, responsive staff etc. It also has Wifi and internet connections – but at a price.

To access the internet via LAN or WiFi you need to pay a paltry sum of Rp15,000 for 30 minutes, Rp 25,000 for an hour or Rp 60,000 for a whole day. I checked into my room and asked for internet connection.

I’m not sure about how much I’ll use it so I say I want 1 hour. The hotel’s business center now had to create a voucher and send it to my room so I will have the username and password to access the net. This process takes at least half an hour and involved two or three calls to the Business Center to ask when they would send the voucher up. Each time they said in to or three minutes but the whole process took at least half an hour. It’s all very irritating.

If I extend the usage time I presume they’ll have to create another voucher and the whole process starts again. Now, what are the economics of this penny-wise-pound-foolish practice compared to the providing fee WiFi for hotel guests? The hotel can hardly make money from its WiFi and internet connections this way. The margins must be terribly thin since it hasn’t been able to attract any advertiser to its login page, so why piss off the guests for something that hardly makes money?

The manager should just put down the consultant who sold him this “solution.” And by being so parsimonious with the internet juice the Novotel Semarang is not building up any goodwill with its laptop toting guests as well, which must be many since it is a business hotel. The next time, I’d try out a different hotel, not because I cannot afford the Rp20,000 per hour of internet time but because I hate myopia in business practices.

Novotel as a chain of hotels is also being inconsistent with it services. Novotel Surabaya provides free WiFi connection, albeit only in its pool and lobby area. But that’s a step up from the Scrooges in Semarang. The management earns the Unspun shit-for-brains tag for their myopia.

Update: I’m now told that I cannot use the 60 minutes in separate lots. The clock starts ticking the moment I log on and I have 60 minutes of usage, whether I use it or not. Can someone tell me how do I double tag this hotel with my shit-for-brains tag? The internet experience in Novotel Semarang sucks.