Business travel is booked at particular price points, $150, $300, etc. based on the employee's rank in the company. On top of that there's a daily allowance for incidentals like room service, parking, and wifi, so the hotels overcharge to extract as much of it as possible. You're much less likely to see wifi charges at boutique hotels or at resorts where there are fewer business travelers.
There's also a budgeting issue. A hotel spending hundreds of thousands of dollars installing wifi is going to want to recoup that cost directly instead of assigning it to overhead, and once they start collecting fees the revenue is hard to give up. A hostel can just add a $50 consumer router to their existing internet connection.
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Business travel is booked at particular price points, $150, $300, etc. based on the employee's rank in the company. On top of that there's a daily allowance for incidentals like room service, parking, and wifi, so the hotels overcharge to extract as much of it as possible. You're much less likely to see wifi charges at boutique hotels or at resorts where there are fewer business travelers.
There's also a budgeting issue. A hotel spending hundreds of thousands of dollars installing wifi is going to want to recoup that cost directly instead of assigning it to overhead, and once they start collecting fees the revenue is hard to give up. A hostel can just add a $50 consumer router to their existing internet connection.