FWIW I have seen this in practice at other convention centers (not owned by Marriott). We attended a convention (as an exhibitor) this year in MN and had to spend $10k for 3 days of Internet connectivity over WiFi. Your choices were to pay (this was the cheapest plan, others went much higher), or use your own. If they caught you using your own, they would block you and shut down your booth at the convention.
Their rationale/justification was that because WiFi at scale (40k attendees, couple hundred exhibitors) the MiFis and other hotspots are using the bandwidth that the exhibitors have paid (a lot of money) for and caused issues with their demos (which the attendees paid entry fees to see).
Convention centers operate in the world of unrealistically high pricing that is rarely seen outside of airport newsstands . For example, they wanted to charge us $3k for renting a 42" TV for 3 days. We ended up just buying a 27" Thunderbolt display and saved a ton (and had a nice monitor to give to one of our devs after the show).
Their rationale/justification was that because WiFi at scale (40k attendees, couple hundred exhibitors) the MiFis and other hotspots are using the bandwidth that the exhibitors have paid (a lot of money) for and caused issues with their demos (which the attendees paid entry fees to see).
Convention centers operate in the world of unrealistically high pricing that is rarely seen outside of airport newsstands . For example, they wanted to charge us $3k for renting a 42" TV for 3 days. We ended up just buying a 27" Thunderbolt display and saved a ton (and had a nice monitor to give to one of our devs after the show).