Marriott Backs Down From Controversial Plan To Block Personal WiFi Of Guests

Hotel WiFi is not cheap and for the most part, it’s not very good either. This is due to many things, but we reckon that the amount of guests surfing on the network has probably something to do with it not being as fast as it should. Some users have resorted to turning on personal hotspots to get around this problem.

However as you might recall, the Marriott Hotels has decided to block personal hotspots which they justified by saying that they don’t want their guests subject to a possible hack. It sounded like a rather flimsy excuse and the good news is that Marriott has ultimately decided to back down from their rather controversial policy.

The hotel has recently announced that they will no longer be blocking personal hotspots, meaning that guests at their hotels can now enable personal hotspots if they’d rather not pay to use the hotel’s WiFi facilities. In a statement released by the hotel, “Marriott International listens to its customers, and we will not block guests from using their personal Wi-Fi devices at any of our managed hotels.”

Back in October last year, Marriott was hit with a $600,000 fine by the FCC for their WiFi blocking practices. In any case hopefully the case with Marriott will discourage future hotels to think twice before coming up with schemes to force hotel guests to pay for their exorbitant WiFi rates.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General