Wireless LAN, also known as WLAN, is the gateway to the world for many holidaymakers. Places with free internet are therefore in demand and criticism quickly arises if the speed or range is not right. But the parking space operators also pursue different philosophies and express their dissatisfaction.
The grief of motorhome owners
A recent survey on the topic of “Wi-Fi on parking spaces” on our Facebook page showed a very clear picture: motorhome owners are dissatisfied with the offer . Both the number of parking spaces with WiFi and the coverage on those that offer it are too low. WLAN is often advertised as “available”, but the reality is different. Most of the time there would only be one hotspot for the entire place. Technicians and interested parties know that comprehensive WiFi coverage over a larger area also requires a large number of hotspots. According to visitors to our Facebook page , German parking spaces in particular are lagging behind. Only rarely can you actually find coverage across the entire square. For holidaymakers, this often means that the next stop on the trip or leisure activities, if at all, have to be planned from reception. The fact that some places charge fees for using the internet connection also annoys some holidaymakers. Last but not least, this is due to the disproportionately high amounts that are sometimes demanded here.
We want to hear the other side too!
It's not just motorhome owners who complain about poor infrastructure, the operators of motorhome parking spaces are also dissatisfied with the supply . We asked over 3,000 of them whether they would offer WiFi and received some very clear opinions. In order to achieve good coverage on the parking spaces, the basic services must be right. We were told several times that the mainly rural regions in Germany are still lagging far behind. The tenor is that there is a lack of political will here to actually be able to offer broadband internet across the board. There seems to be no lack of desire on the part of parking space operators to provide a good offer. An operator in Lower Saxony told us about the “ Freifunk Nordwest ” association, through which he had his WLAN offer created. This association has set itself the goal of creating free radio networks in northwest Germany. Other clubs of this type are spread across the federal territory of Germany. A great project, in our opinion! Other parking space operators have the opposite goal: deliberately not offering WiFi . A winery from Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, wants to give its guests a real vacation and that includes not surfing the Internet!
Lots of feedback and our answer
In our focus campaigns with surveys and reports, we always try to incorporate the feedback from parking space operators and motorhome owners equally into the development of our portal. In order to better reflect the availability of WiFi on a parking space, we have taken three measures:
- The “WiFi” property now includes more than one “yes/no” selection. The range can now also be specified in the broadest sense. Users who consciously want to forego Wi-Fi can also select “not available”.
- The cost of WiFi can now be determined as “free”, “limited free” and “paid”.
- The Wi-Fi equipment can now also be rated by motorhome owners
Through our last mailing to the parking space operators, over 1,100 pieces of data regarding WiFi availability have now been collected. We would like to thank the users of our website and Facebook page for their input on this topic. This gives the parking spaces the opportunity to record the data so precisely that any discussions on site should no longer occur.
We hope to receive even more feedback and ideas on how we can make our platform even better in the future. Thank you!
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