What is the first thing that you are going to do when you arrive in your hotel lobby? Probably take out your phone and start searching for the wifi? But it is not going to happen if your hotel choice is Marriott, because all your internet access is blocked by the hotel’s conference center.
Jeff Flaherty, the company spokesman, stated that they are trying to protect the customers “from rogue wireless hotspots that can cause degraded service, insidious cyber-attacks and identity theft” . However, some of their employees “used technology to disrupt customer WiFi transmissions”, which is terrible and unreasonable. Marriott Hotel still charged their customers “as much as $1,000 per device” to access their wifi and to charge on wifi has become a big part of Marriott Inc.’s income.
If we take a look at out society today, internet is an indispensable factor of our lives. As a result, to have free access to the internet is what most customers need. There are many ways to make more money, but internet is not a good way to charge. With the growth of online social media, the customers’ demand has changed, and Marriott should pay attention to them. To provide their customers with best services should be Marriott’s goal but not just making money.
Fortunately, Marriott “was fined $600,000 by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission”. After this, some people still believe that $600,000 is not enough compare to what they had paid to Marriott. Now, I’m removing Marriott from that list of hotel that I want to go to.
Marriott to pay $600,000 fine for blocking customers’ WiFi