As travellers increasingly expect free wifi in hotels, airports and other public places, one company has researched how most networks are not legally compliant.
Legalities vary from country to country but the basic rule is that online access needs to be able to be tracked back to the user.
The research from Purple WiFi shows that while 82% of venues globally believe they are compliant, the majority are not with 2048 out of a total of 3,349 running completely open networks or enabling users to access via passwords.
The research also reveals 58% either have no content filtering in place or are unaware whether they do or don't.
Additional findings from the report include:
- 77% offer guest wifi
- 76% offer free guest wifi
- Almost 70% have no way of collecting user data which goes against legal requirements
- Of those that provide wifi, 44% say it is following requests from customers
- Only 7.3% have access to an analytics portal and only 8.6% can collect customer data limiting marketing opportunities
- Of those that offer a paid wifi service, almost 50% plan to stick with the paid service
- Only 3% of businesses are using wifi solely as a marketing tool
Of respondents, almost 40% (1,285) come from hotels and guest houses, more than than 30% from restaurants and 10% from other travel businesses.
The majority of respondents were managers, owners and directors with just over a third coming from the US, 5% from Canada and 8% from the UK.
The research was carried out in November by Purple WiFi which offers a free Social Wifi (login via social media) service as well as content filtering and analytics via its premium service.