Dublin's three-star Drury Court Hotel has seen a surge in business customers by providing free wireless internet access throughout the hotel, writes John Collins.

The hotel is now the most used hotspot in the European network of more than 1,500 locations operated by free-hotspot.com, with an average of 86 users per day between April and June this year.

Paul Hand, manager of the Drury Court, says that as well as significantly increasing the number of business people choosing the hotel, offering free Wi-Fi has increased business during off-peak times. Last Friday afternoon, several customers could be observed using laptops in the bar of the hotel.

Free-hotspot.com is a Dublin-headquartered business that is rapidly growing a European network of free Wi-Fi hotspots that is supported by displaying adverts to users before they log on to the internet.

According to Joe Brunoli, the company's vice-president of market development, it is the fastest growing network in the world and has doubled its number of hotspots in the last six months. It recently signed a deal with the Capital Bars group to provide service in its Dublin bars.

The company outsources as much of its activities as possible using DoubleClick to serve ads to customers and a network of partners around Europe to install the necessary hardware in bars and restaurants. Its Dublin partner is LanTech, which carried out the installations at the Drury Court and the Capital Bars venues. "We have found a way to make free Wi-Fi pay, largely because the cost of the hardware needed has fallen so much," says Mr Brunoli.

He explains that the service shares 10 per cent of the advertising revenues with the owner of the premises which generally covers the cost of providing the necessary broadband connection. The premises pays for installation, but receives the Wi-Fi hardware at no cost.

Earlier this month, it teamed up with another free Wi-Fi provider, MeshHopper, to provide internet access along a 22-km stretch of the Thames from Millbank to Greenwich.