Internet in Your Holiday Home. Leading on from my article yesterday: Holiday Home Owners You Need the Internet, this article will look at how as a home owner you can get Internet In Your Holiday Home and make it readily available to your guests who have booked your property without it bankrupting you or causing you too many problems.
The most obvious is to permanently have Internet available in your home through a yearly contract which the guest simply connects to. You will obviously need to provide them with the access details but this can come as part of your arrival pack. Be careful that there is not a daily usage limit on your contract which if exceeded incurs costs. If the customer decides he is downloading some extra large files or wants to send his friends the 300 pictures he has taken that day then you may well start to find yourself out of pocket. It is your choice if you want to charge for this service, you can offer it for free or charge a one off fee for the log in details.
If you don’t want too much involvement or would rather all your holidaymakers didn’t have access to your Internet subscription then there is the option to work with a local company that arranges for Internet to be supplied specifically for the purpose of allowing guests to use the internet whilst on holiday. As a home owner you will need to pay for the installation of the router that emits a Wi-Fi signal. Guests can then, through an instruction sheet, connect to the signal through any device they want to use. The guests have to pay a fee to the Internet provider online. They then have unlimited Internet access for the duration that they have paid for.
A working example of this is a company called Wi-Fi blue operating in the Mijas, Fuengirola area of the Costa del Sol. After the initial set up cost there is nothing further for you the home owner to pay. At that point you are able to advertise your Villa as having internet access. All other costs are paid by the guest depending on how many days usage they purchase. A typical example is 12 Euros for the week which at that price the customer is more than happy to pay.
An alternative is to provide a Pay as you Go Wi-Fi dongle with a data chip which the customer can plug into the side of their device e.g. laptop and access the Internet. You will need to be careful of costs here as you will have the initial cost of charging up the card. It is best to make a charge for the usage that covers your expenditure along with a refundable deposit that covers any eventualities where the Dongle is not returned. You will also need to supply a list of local vendors and their location where guests can go to top up the data card.
The plug in USB Dongle option is ideal for those who want to use a laptop but those on Smart devices such as Tablets and Phones will lose out with this option. To cover all bases an option is to purchase a Mi.Fi unit that can be supplied with a Pay as you go Data card. The Mi.Fi unit will then emit a Wi-Fi single in the room that it is located in, multiple devices can use the internet at any one time. Again costs will need to be covered by the customer. Here, it is best to offer the Internet as an optional extra at the booking stage that the customer selects and pays for. Make sure you advertise just how much usage their payment gets them. You just then need to ensure that the data chip has the correct amount of credit and is available to be used on the guests arrival.
All options allow you to advertise your Holiday home as having Internet, just make it clear in the advert just how the internet is supplied and if there are any associated costs.
Panoramic Villas work with all their owners providing advice on how to make the most out of renting their Holiday Home. To see how we can help you take a look at our services and get in touch to see how you can become the next successful Panoramic Partner.
