I am waiting at the Ritz-Carlton in Singapore for a breakfast meeting. Since it is raining today I booked a cab fairly early and am now doing work in the spacious lobby. There is a wireless network, but oddly, you have to pay S$22/hour.

And I am surprised.

I can get free wireless at any number of coffee shops in Singapore, in fact, Singapore itself is working on going wireless completely (wireless@SG), but here at one of the most luxurious hotel chains in the world, in order to check my email I'll need to go to the front desk and pay for a pre-paid card to get a code to enter in the browser.

I've been trying to think what costs they might actually be incurring that would require lobby guests to need to pay for access. There is no one here, and, in most hotels I visit, very few people go to hotels all day just to check their email. But, let us say that did happen, I am assuming that walk-in Internet email traffic, customers you might not want to use your service for free, would only come if you were in a convenient location. The Ritz-Carlton Singapore is not a hotel I would just walk in to as the location is not super convenient.

So, why do they do so? Cost recouping seems plausible, yet, since they are probably providing free access to guests (I hope they are) they are already paying for the fixed and incremental management costs - so that's covered. As a deterrent to loafers? Again, that should only occur in a high traffic area.

I'm not sure. If anyone out there is in the hotel management business I'd be interested in knowing what still drives hotels to charge for wireless access on their properties.