How to Kill the Mood of the Customers in Your Meeting Space

Still think you should charge for Meeting Room Wifi?

The meeting room has been booked and the presenter arrives to set up their presentation, they open their laptop to see what meeting room wifi connections are available. They find the correct network but notice that its password protected. That’s fine, they have a look around the meeting room for the password illustrated on a sticker or a sign but are unable to locate it. They go off to find a team member and ask politely for the meeting room wifi password but are promptly told that they must pay for it – it even costs extra for a high-speed option. Well, that quickly puts a damper on the presenter’s mood.


This scenario is commonplace across workspaces worldwide and begs the question: Are you still charging for meeting room wifi?


Wifi, which was once upsold for additional revenue generation, is now an expected commodity. In the same way that a client does not receive an invoice on-charging the air-conditioning, electricity, and water that they consumed, invoicing for wifi seems almost archaic these days.


Free wifi is a drawcard for many people and charging for it could actually be doing more harm than good by deterring the booker from returning to your meeting space. A survey by Hotels.com found that 49% of travelers choose their hotel based on the availability of free wifi. What makes you think people are any different when choosing a meeting room location? Given the prolific nature of public wifi available in places such as shopping centres, fast food restaurants and airports it seems unheard of that wifi is being charged for at all.

What you may not realize is that there is a range of ways the meeting room wifi can be provided for ‘free’ while still providing a benefit in return.


Buying wifi is relatively cheap however managing its access to an increasingly transient customer base can be costly in terms of technology required, training of staff & vendor management. It can be cheaper to provide free meeting room wifi than to manage processes relating to the charging of wifi.


Factoring wifi in as a commodity allows you to budget its cost alongside your other utilities when setting meeting room prices. By including the cost of the wifi within your prices and advertising free wifi you are winning across the board.

No one expects to get wifi entirely for free and often people are more than happy to provide their email address or contact details in return for wifi. By asking them to opt into marketing material or follow your Social Media pages you can stay connected to them and can encourage them to return to your centre to use your meeting room facilities next time.

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