Savvy ferry firms wake up to net benefits of free WiFi

The modest cost of providing free internet can be easily recouped in custom

THE VERY first time I visited Ireland, I arrived by ferry after taking the train from London. I had fallen in love with Irish writers, and I wanted to see the places associated with Joyce, O’Casey and Yeats.

The train portion I don’t remember at all, but I sure remember the ferry – a glum and tedious journey in a grubby vessel.

It would be more than two decades before I took the ferry again. Like a lot of people in Ireland, I still imagined it would be the same kind of experience. But as so many of us have found, mostly thanks to Icelandic volcanoes, it’s nothing at all like the old days.

I now prefer the ferry anytime to flying. It is so relaxing, the ships are bright and cheery, there’s all sorts of entertainment, there are restaurants, cafes, and bars, and – hooray – Wi-Fi. Both Irish Ferries and Stena Line offer Wi-Fi. On Irish Ferries, you have to pay. On Stena Line, it’s free.

Thanks solely to that difference, Stena Line has gained over €1,000 in custom from me, on regular holidays to the UK with my dogs (the UK gets my holiday business more often than Ireland, because the country is so much more accommodating and welcoming to vacationing dogs, but that’s a different competitive issue).

I’m not sure how many others base their ferry choice on Wi-Fi access options, but I always see some other people with open laptops. I certainly enjoy having the time to relax and work on some e-mails or just fool around on the web, in between having something to eat and reading the newspapers or a book on the three-hour journey to and from Holyhead.

Or more pointedly – I enjoy having the option to use the internet without having to purchase time online, and wouldn’t use a service I have to pay for, so Stena gets my business. I am not sure how much it costs to provide such services, but I would think the custom gained by offering free access probably outweighs the custom lost for not offering it for free, thus encouraging at least some portion of your potential business to go elsewhere.

The economics of paid-for Wi-Fi has always intrigued me. To start with, there’s the hotel Wi-Fi paradox: the universal law that says the more you pay for a hotel room, the less likely they are to throw in free Wi-Fi, even though it must be a trivial expense. In the US, and increasingly over here, it’s the more modest motels and hotels that provide free Wi-Fi.

I have never understood this. People always feel poorly done by to find they are paying the cost of an entire month’s internet access at home, in order to get one or two days’ access in a hotel. On the flip side, finding that your room includes free Wi-Fi always engenders goodwill – I know I would rather have free Wi-Fi then have a free breakfast included in my stay.

Likewise, it’s always wonderful to find you have free airport Wi-Fi (as in Las Vegas), even if only for an initial period, as at San Francisco international these days. Aer Lingus is finally offering free Wi-Fi in its Dublin lounges – a much-appreciated perk.

Finding free Wi-Fi while driving is also a handy pleasure. This too tends to be a lot easier in the UK than in Ireland, not least because Moto, the largest motorway services provider there, offers free Wi-Fi at all of its road services sites. That is certainly a feature that must encourage many drivers to select Moto services over others.

A new report from analyst In-Stat on the Wi-Fi hotspot market notes that one of the most significant business model transitions for Wi-Fi providers right now is towards free access. That’s true of both the telecommunications providers, who are giving customers either free or bundled Wi-Fi access as part of their accounts, and the businesses who are using Wi-Fi as a way of bringing in paid business in some other way.

“The market is still undergoing significant changes in usage and business models,” senior analyst Amy Cravens notes in a statement. “Wi-Fi hotspots have become a service used to attract customers to other product offerings, rather than a standalone offering. Whether the product is broadband, mobile service, or a cup of coffee, Wi-Fi is being layered on top of core offerings as a competitive differentiator.”

Mobile handset and tablet access are of course driving a lot of this change – it isn’t all about laptops anymore. People increasingly want to use these devices for sporadic net access – no longer just e-mail, but for checking into their social networks, watching video, and so on. But not at the high price charged by so many service providers in the past.

I know that when travelling, I regulate my own usage based on whether and where I can find free Wi-Fi.

Increasingly, I am looking actively for hotspots that enable me to do this and will gladly buy a coffee, a pint or a meal or two (as recently in Wales) when I find them.

In-Stat says there’s strong growth in hotspots, which will expand to over one million worldwide in 2013. Good news for those of us who like to jump on and offline while on the go.