Controlling the guest's in-room Internet portal. Guest portals are the first Internet browser screen that our guest Sam would see as he accesses the Internet from his guest room. Conventional Internet strategy says that if you control the first Internet screen then you control (or heavily influence) where or what they might do next. Control of this guest portal does not mean you have to build and maintain the portal or even operate its web server (you can hire out for both of those). Control of your guest portal means that you control the presentation of links to other Internet web sites, content, and services. You are the aggregator and presenter of Internet content on your guest's behalf. You are the creator without compromise in creating a guest online experience. Control means that you the hotelier or brand, hold a negotiated contractual relationship with a group of individual Internet-based content providers for purposes of deliery to your guests. By the way, your leverage in those negotiations is the time and attention of your guests because they are a captive audience worth money to advertisers and online media sources.

Control of Internet billing. Billing control means that you the hotelier can authenticate a guest's use of Internet services, capture their activity, analyze it, price it by the day, the byte, the page, or the click, and finally post it, all independent of your Internet bandwidth and content vendors. Today's guestroom telephone sets the right precedent. You buy bulk phone service from the phone company and you resell that phone service to guests using a call accounting system. That system allows you complete control of pricing policy. Today, there are guest Internet accounting products (frequently called communications accounting products) that will bill for guest Internet use (right down to each web site they access). Such products reside at your property's gateway to the Internet and act like a toll booth for guest Internet activity. You bill at the information super-highway's on-ramp. With such tools you collect and share revenue with your Internet vendors. They don't share revenue with you. You need control of this sort of tool.

Implement Access Charges for Broadband. Access charges are well established in the consumers mind. And by the way, there is no charging with the bundling of costs into the guest room rate. This is a rationalization for eating the cost of broadband (and turning an profit center into a cost center). The wise hotelier knows that rack rates reflect market rates and when negotiating group and traveler business, the sales team will be forced back to a market rate (and no, broadband is not poised to raise hotel rates nationwide). One last reason to charge access fees: you may not succeed in establishing a guest room e-commerce revenue stream. There is a reasonable argument to make - hoteliers will not succeed in capturing guest room e-commerce revenues. To illustrate, consider that I buy my tiddlywinks from tiddlywinks.com before I arrive at your hotel. And I will buy them from tiddlywinkds.com after I leave. What is the incentive for the tiddlywinks portal to share revenue with someone who happens to be housing me for two days? The stronger a portal gets over time, the less leverage you have. Imagine a portal called moviesovertheinternet.com and now you can see actual revenue erosion from today's in room movie world. And by the way, you will be the one expected to provide the bandwidth for the entire hotel watching high definition internet movies. Charge for access. Its your hedge against an uncertain e-commerce world.