Small business owners want WiFi on holiday

Recent research by The Payroll Site shows that 70% of small business owners prefer to stay somewhere with WiFi access when they go on holiday (taken from a sample of 93 small businesses). However, it also found that only 58% of the 6396 hotels and Bed & Breakfasts listed in the 2010 AA guides offer WiFi access.

Many small business owners need to keep up with work issues constantly and feel they can only really leave on holiday if they have the means to do so. Having access to the internet can help them decide in favour of going away on holiday to a particular hotel or Bed & Breakfast, which increases the number of potential customers for accommodation providers, as long as they do provide internet access (The Payroll Site research shows that 14% of the small business owners interviewed would like plug-in internet access and 23% would like access to an internet PC).

The issue is important as there were 4.8m small businesses in the UK in 2008, according to the BIS, and many of them take holidays at different times of the year, usually when their business sector is quiet, thus providing with a constant source of customers and potential revenue to accommodation providers.