Category: Owner Information

Wi-Fi or Not? The Risks and Benefits of Offering Internet in your Holiday Home

It is now taken for granted that guests will be able to access WiFi whilst on holiday. Whilst going away is often about ‘getting away from it all’, for a lot of guests, watching a box set, surfing their social media feed, or Googling the latest football results is all part of creating some downtime. Kids like to play games and download movies on their tablets and for many people it is important to be able to stay in contact with family and friends. For others, being able to ‘stay in touch’ with the office could be a deal breaker when finding somewhere to stay. In a nutshell, providing WiFi in your holiday home is no longer a ‘nice to have’. It is an essential requirement. Without WiFi you will find it harder to get bookings.

Setting up broadband in your property is easy. All you need is a phone line and a standard broadband package. This should cost less than £20 a month and will include a router. If you only let your house out during the holiday season, providers such as Virgin Media, NOW and Direct Save Telecom offer a temporary 30 day broadband service which might suit you better if you don’t want to be tied into a 12 month contract.

However, before you sign up to the latest broadband deal, it is important that you are aware of your responsibilities and risks as the WiFi provider and what you can do to mitigate them.

Illegal downloads and copyright infringement

The vast majority of people who connect to the internet whilst on holiday will use your WiFi in a sensible and responsible manner. It is likely that they just want to find the closest supermarket, or respond to a few emails whilst away. However, there is a minority who use public WiFi to illegally download music and films or access inappropriate sites. In 2009 there was a well-publicised case where a pub owner was fined £8000 when one of its’ customers was caught illegally downloading copyrighted material. At the time, this case caused a lot of controversy and concern for other people who offered WiFi to their customers or guests.

Since then the Digital Economy Act 2010 and the Digital Economy Act 2017 clearly sets out the law for illegal downloading and criminal copyright infringement. Whilst much of the Digital Economy Act 2010 was never actually passed into law, the Digital Economy Act 2017 places a more strict set of rules on internet subscribers who commit copyright infringements. It is the responsibility of the internet subscriber, which in this case is you, to ensure that the users of the broadband in your property stay within the law.

Whilst it is impossible to completely prevent illegal or inappropriate use of the internet, there are a few things that you should do to minimise the risk.

Passwords

Firstly, the main issue with the 2009 pub owner case was that the landlord offered unsecure internet access which meant they didn’t know who had downloaded the content. As holiday home owners, we know who is staying in our properties and using our internet. In order to ensure that the WiFi cannot be accessed by anyone else, it is essential that you have a strong password. Ensure that it is complicated enough so it cannot be easily guessed. For example, don’t use the name or address of the property. It is also a good idea to change the password occasionally.

You should also change the admin password of your router and keep your router locked away to prevent any ‘curious’ guests fiddling with it.

Parental controls/filtering

Another way to help prevent illegal downloading is to block certain sites. A lot of ISPs (Internet Service Providers), including BT, Talk Talk and Sky amongst many others, include a ‘parental control’ functionality. This will block certain categories or content for all devices connected to your WiFi. For example, you can allow access to social media and video sharing sites such as YouTube, but block other sites that might be inappropriate. This may be something that parents booking a family holiday cottage may actually be looking for to help keep their children safe online.

Some parental controls can also enable you to look at what guests have filtered during their holiday. If you think you might use this function it is important that you explain this in your booking terms and conditions to ensure you do not breach any GDPR rules.


Exceeding download limits

You will need to be aware of your bandwidth usage limit and ensure that your guests do not exceed it. In reality, holiday makers don’t go away to stay indoors all day watching films. However, the demand for streaming music and films is increasing and if you are not careful this can start to eat into your monthly allowance. To avoid paying fees due to exceeding your monthly limit it is probably worth choosing an ‘unlimited’ option. Make sure you read the small print though as ‘unlimited’ often has a ‘fair use’ policy attached to it.

It is unlikely that a normal user would break your ‘fair use’ limit during their holiday. However, it is worth adding a clause in your booking terms and conditions about ‘acceptable use’ of your broadband connection and the guests’ obligations regarding downloading illegal or copyrighted material. This could include that the internet cannot be used for profit or gambling or illegal activities which may include illegal software and music downloads. This small business blog has a WiFi policy as part of a terms and conditions template that you might find useful. It might also be worth recommending that guests have their own virus protection and that their children should be supervised.

It is worth noting that if you provide devices for your guests to stream music, or DVDs for your guests to watch, you will need to buy music and DVD licences. You can find out more about music and film licences for your holiday home here.

What if I have a poor broadband connection?

If your holiday home is in a very remote area with non-existent or a very poor broadband connection, a mobile broadband service could be your answer. This is a wireless internet connection that uses a mobile phone network via 3G and 4G. Major mobile phone companies such as Vodafone, EE and O2 offer a mobile broadband service. This can be a cost effective way of enabling your guests to ‘log on’. However, you should be aware that there are usually data caps and it is unlikely to be able to cope with a whole house full of people trying to connect to the internet.

If you do not have a good 4G connection then it is worth providing your guests with a list of places, such as local cafes or the library, that offer free public WiFi. Here’s a list of other things that will help your guests get their holiday off to a great start.

Taking a holiday away from the online world

In todays’ increasingly busy world, where everyone’s phone is always buzzing and beeping, the idea of ‘digital detox’ holidays are starting to emerge. For some people, a real holiday means switching off from all those WhatsApp groups, constant Facebook notifications and email messages. For the kids to leave their screens at home and to surf some waves rather than social media. An ‘off-grid’ holiday certainly won’t suit everyone. In fact, you will exclude a huge percentage of people who need or expect to have WiFi whilst on holiday. However, if your property is suitably remote and you are looking for a unique selling point, then escaping the modern world and binning technology altogether could offer you a niche market.

For those of you staying ‘on grid’, it is impossible to be 100% sure that your guests will not use your WiFi connection for illegal activities. However, by taking a few sensible precautions you can help place the liability on the user rather than yourself.

24 thoughts on “Wi-Fi or Not? The Risks and Benefits of Offering Internet in your Holiday Home

  1. mrs j wilson

    I stayed in a holiday cottage recently I discussed wi fi with the owner as we both had accomodation , he said he would not because he would not know what guests were downloading , he was frightened bad downloads would be traced back to his property and he could end up in trouble as it would be hard to prove who was on the wi fi . A lot of rural areas in the north do not even have broadband connection , or very slow connections , my own only works at half national speed so this puts us at a dissadvantage over other areas .

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  2. lesley abbott

    Agree with Mrs Wilson,in rural Yorkshire we have a co-operative broadband but connection is very slow, we tried for a few years and it became problematic with password etc,.constant calls during the week from guests struggling.
    I personally have a pay as you go dongle for access when away from home. considering investigating putting one in the cottage. Has any one tried this method?

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  3. Kathryn Dewhurst

    Thank you for your timely analysis of the risks and benefits of offering WiFi access. We offer free access, and my experience is that most people use it responsibly, but there are exceptions if the family have teenage children – we have been caught out a couple of times by these guests exceeding our overall allowance, but as we only pay £1 per extra GB it isn’t worth the aggravation of trying to chase up the excessive costs – and indeed the first time it happened I cursed the family, who were from Germany, but they recommended us to friends who came the next year so I feel it is all a matter of swings and roundabouts.
    I certainly feel that the free WiFi offers us an advantage when people book with us, and when I go away I try to seek out similar facilities although sometimes not so successfully. However, I feel that not offering WiFi will become the exception fairly soon.
    Interesting comments about illegal downloads. I shall add some extra wording to my terms and conditions.

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  4. Cath O'Leary

    Hi I have a cottage in rural Yorkshire with no wifi we have been looking into satellite wifi, has anybody out there any knowledge about this? We have sky broadband and its rubbish so we would run our house and the cottage which is not attached to us but on same site. We are kept busy even though we dont offer wifi people have dongles and ipads although we are 5star gold I feel we will soon have to offer this service as part of the system for awards.

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  5. Tom Withycombe

    Hello …. I have not installed full WiFi in our lodge as there is no landline at present laid to the property. I use (and recommend our guests to use) a laptop or iPad to which I attach a PAYG dongle from Vodaphone. In this part of Argyll this is by far the most practical means of managing E-mail and searching. I understand the concerns expressed about content of downloads but those who visit our lodge do so largely to get away from 21st C. life. The service via dongle isn’t fast but it enables those who must check e-mails, football results etc. to do so; if they wish full WiFi service, there are cafes etc reasonably near which offer the service for the price of a cuppa!

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    1. Steve

      A good point you have mentioned Tom. If you cannot offer Wi-Fi, we recommend investigating local public places that do and putting this in your advert text. Some people want the flexibility of internet access in the cottage but others are happy to check emails etc every couple of days and can do this from a local cafe or pub. Mentioning it in the advert may swing it for some!

      Reply
  6. Karen Keeling

    We have BT broad Band via Wi-Fi which is easy to set up and guests use a password provided at our holiday cottage. This is used by a fair number of guests and is not a problem, We will even provide a small net book for the use of Guests if required, personally I would not book a cottage for a holiday without decent broadband available so I can keep in touch with my potential guests

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  7. David Jenkins

    I had such a poor connection I didn`t dare offer wi-fi to my customers, It`s a bit better now, but if your connection isn`t great customers using the net will slow down your connection which could be irritating. You could find out if your property is in a BT FON or Openzone area. These connections are free to certain BT internet users your customer can purchase time from BT should they wish to use it. This alleviates any downloading issues etc on your connection.

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    1. Steve

      Hi David, the BT FON / BT Openzone point is a good option that I hadn’t really considered. For those who don’t know, BT offers their own broadband customers the option to join the BT FON “community”. The idea is very simple; if you agree to share a portion of your BT Homehub as a BT FON / BT Openzone “hot spot”, you can in turn use other peoples – worldwide and at no extra charge! For those who are still worried about download risks (and if you are a BT customer) then this is possibly the safest option. Although as a subscriber and cottage owner we are sharing a portion of our own bandwidth, the guest would be using their own BT account, not ours. Obviously you need to be a BT customer to do this because part of the enabling technology is inside the BT Homehub. This way we don’t need to share our own Wi-Fi password as the guests would use their own. I thought that the only downside would be that our guests would need to be participating BT FON customers, I didn’t realise that non-BT customers could purchase BT Openzone vouchers. Good idea!

      Reply
  8. Anne Wander

    We supply free wifi to all our guests, subject to Terms and Conditions of use (I obtained guidance on T&C from the Police). We change the password weekly and have no problems with provision of the service.

    We are in a rural area and our broadband speed can be slow at times, but guests are generally very understanding.

    In the past, I have lost bookings when I didn’t provide wifi. I think it is becoming a ‘must have’ for holiday accommodation in this day and age.

    Reply
    1. Steve

      I think you are right Anne and we have certainly seen an increase in people looking for internet access. We personally cannot go away unless we have pretty decent broadband and I know of a number of bookings we would have lost for our own cottages if we had not offered this service. On this note, if you can only offer patchy broadband or slow access, providing people are made aware of this upfront (i.e. it is accurately advertised), you may still find it good enough for some guests.

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  9. Patrick

    An internet connection is now an expectation rather than a luxury, or very soon will be.

    We don’t make any charge for the service, and to do so would be to risk an implicit guarantee of availability. We’re in a rural area, and the connection does drop occasionally, although not for long periods, and is not blazingly fast.

    The question of bandwidth usage, and illegal downloads, is tricky. A partial solution can be found by employing a system called OpenDNS (just Google the name for details) which allows you to block sites by type (eg movies, gaming, pornography etc etc) as well as by individual site name. It’s free, and doesn’t require a degree in Geek to implement, either.

    This has two benefits: it shows you are making best endeavours to prevent the downloading of illegal material, and it blocks the usage of bandwidth-hungry sites that can eat into your allowance, or just clog up a relatively slow rural connection like ours. It’s not a perfect solution; we’ve had enterprising teenagers manage to use over 2GB of bandwidth in one day, but you can find out which site is being visited and then block it.

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  10. Linda

    I also tell guests that BTopenzone is usually available and that seems to work well without using our own allowances. It is dependent on local subscribers signing up to the service and leaving their interent on for 24 hours so you should check that at differnet times of the day. I do wonder however how much longer this will be an issue though as more and more people are using their smartphones to access emails and social networking sites.

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  11. Christine Wade

    In this day and age WiFi is an essential service. To safeguard yourself download the Public Wi-Fi Access Terms and Conditions or, having sought professional advice, write your own terms and conditions – offer this document to your guests with request that they sign it, accepting these conditions of use, and return it to you before you give them any access codes or passwords.

    Reply
  12. Cathy

    I agree many guests are now bringing laptops or i phone/ ipads and want internet access, I am not very techno savy and had no idea before that there was risk from guests accessing illegal material. Where can I find a sample Public Access terms and conditions?
    Our holiday cottage is an annexe to our house so guests share our broadband connection, (via a cable as we cant get the wifi to work through the 3ft thick walls, but this works ok for most guests, but means they don’t need to enter a password).
    What should I block and how do I do this, we have unlimited usage.

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  13. Chris Simm

    Our wifi is provided by the site that our lodge is on. You make up your own username and password to access the service and that is valid for 30 days. I think the site runs this through a server as mentioned in the Rockafella post above. As we keep a record of our guests, should the finger be pointed at us for illegal downloads, we would at least know which guests to approach about the subject. Many guests can connect to the same access point though, so I don’t know how the site would differentiate who was who.
    We get mixed reactions about wifi, some want it, some aren’t bothered. I’d say it would be better to offer it than not. Make sure your router used a password to access it, then you know it’s only your guests that are using it (and therefore who to appraoch about issues).
    I think I ought to add something to our terms and conditions about usage – that would cover our backs a bit.
    Cathy (and others!), you could add a wireless access point onto the end your cable that goes through the wall to offer wifi – the beauty of this is that you can set a different password on the access point and on your own wireless router, so you know that guests can only access via the access point (though to be honest, I think it makes little difference, other than you can set different filters on the access point to the ones you put in your own router – e.g. block specific sites, or specific words on websites).
    I use Netgear routers and wireless access points and they have been pretty reliable and straight forward to set up (I know what I’m doing and I’ve still had to give up on other units – e.g. Belkin). I use a Netgear RangeMax Wireless access point so that my father who lives nearby can piggyback off our broadband. The distance between antenna is about 60 feet.

    I hope this is useful.
    Chris

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  14. Andy Collier

    Right from the off (2006) we’ve offered free wifi and telephone (honesty box). If you’re attracting families, and expect a certain calibre of guest (if I may put it like that) then internet access nowadays is essential. It enables me to work from there occasionally whilst the family holiday, and I can keep up with bookings.
    Staithes in North Yorks is a small fishing town and has almost no mobile phone coverage, so guests being able to phone home, relatives etc especially at New Year is important. We use BT Broadband and a HomeHub, and I think it’s a fairly high usage limit, and I’ve never had it being breached. The hub is secure, so the guests in the cottage at any time are the people I would approach if I had such a problem. I live miles away so would have a genuine alibi if dodgy downloads occurred.
    I tend to treat people as I would like to find them. We make the booking process as simple as possible, are friendly, and ensure they get good value. I’ve never bothered with a T&C document for the wifi or the bookings, as I know that if guests do damage, unless it’s criminal damage, the law won’t allow you to chase them down anyway. Civil cases appear not to be worth the hassle of attempting to take to court (courts treat landlords as scum). There are a few guests I don’t invite back, but c40% of my business is repeat.
    Just last night the guests there at the moment commented how important the convenience of wifi internet at the cottage is.

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  15. Pat

    We now feel we should install wifi in our holiday cottage and are in the process of doing so with BT. Up until now we have had a landline at the cottage which accepts incoming calls (and emergency outgoing calls) only, which enables us to contact our guests after they have arrived, should we have missed seeing them. The problem we will have is we will have to make the landline available for outgoing calls to enable connection to the internet. We can either ‘take a chance’ and have an honesty box for the phone – do other cottage owners find that an honesty box works? Or, we pay for Call Barring to stop outgoing calls but we will have to ‘unlock’ the call barring each month as we will have to make a minimum of two outgoing calls from the landline per month (BT informed us). So as well as paying for wifi we will have to pay for Call Barring, too, and remember to make two calls per month – sounds too much like hard work! Would appreciate hearing other owners’ experiences, especially about having an honesty box.

    Reply
  16. Sarah

    Hi Pat, I have checked this with BT and the representative I spoke to today stated that call barring is currently £3.15 per month and this will allow incoming calls and also emergency and freephone calls to be made. The representative also stated that you can have Wi-Fi internet access on the line whilst it is barred.

    Regarding the point you made about having to make two calls per month, apparently this very much depends on whether you originally took out a ‘special connection offer’ – some people have this stipulation and others not. It sounds like you have this stipulation in your contract so maybe you could make a quick call on each turnaround.

    My personal experience in our cottages is that providing Wi-Fi has more than paid for itself in bookings and I personally would prefer to pay the small monthly charge for peace of mind, rather than rely on people to use the Honest Box.

    Reply
  17. Andy Collier

    We’ve used an honesty box since day 1. Guests usually slightly overpay, so it in fact goes towards the rental. Not yet had a stupid big fee or chatlines calling problem. Had this operation for 6 years now.

    Reply
  18. Pat

    Thanks for your replies, Sarah and Andy. Very interesting to hear about your experience with the ‘honesty box’ – does anyone else have an honesty box, too?

    Well, here’s a bit of bad press for BT – we applied for WiFi with them on 23.07.12 and were told our cottage would be connected on 06.08.12. We are still not connected to the internet and our landline has been down since BT started ‘working’ on our order. Apparently, they tell me they have to work on the external wiring to get broadband installed and this could take some time – though I never receive updates, instead, I have to call them on 151, etc for well over an hour each time! They are so frustrating! However, I do not mind too much waiting for WiFi but am very annoyed by the fact that our phone line is not working at all. When BT work well they are good, but when they don’t ………..!

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  19. Amanda Pountney

    we offer free wif in our letting apartment,, however our connection constantly comes and goes which is very frustrating, for ourselves and guests! we are often asked for the wifi password by restaurant guests and I do not give it out (just say they are picking up our internal internet connection) only because I am afraid it will become a problem with them asking why the wifi keeps going off. I am sure it affects the phone lines as ours has not worked properly since we installed the wifi although BT have checked and checked again.

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  20. Pat

    After more than a month BT have now been able to provide us with WiFi at our holiday cottage! For the whole time they (Openreach) have been ‘working’ on it our landline has not worked either. Finally, we turned up on a changeover day to find this large black plastic connector hanging between the front door and lounge doors! It appears that the Openreach engineer had cut our phone line and in order to reconnect the line in the cheapest way possible, they added this ugly looking connector on the exterior about 6ft from the ground. After many lengthy calls to BT, eventually an experienced engineer came round, who commented that it was shody workmanship, and has now placed this connector in a discrete position and replaced some of the damaged wiring. Hopefully, we will be trouble free now! For anyone who has similar problems in the New Forest, the last engineer who called told us that the wiring in the New Forest was very dated and needed changing, hence, the problems. They were going to be changing it gradually over the next few years, apparently. This may be partly why you now have problems with your phone line, Amanda (previous writer), because there are obviously problems with new installations/wiring and connecting this to the old, worn out wiring. During the time our landline was down, BT would tell us that they have checked the line and it was OK!!! If you do not mind the hassle, all you can do is keep ringing them again and again, though it can take up to 45mins to get through and get your point over!!!

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  21. Geoff PROCTER

    Can anyone recommend an easy to understand, client friendly, wi-fi contract/agreement for visitors to sign before using wi-fi ?

    Thank you

    Reply

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