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Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

hotelwifitest.com

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Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#22
post #12

It's hard enough to use availability of free wifi as a booking filter, let alone quality. Wonder if there isn't space for an independent filtering service -- taking the listings from elsewhere and simply sorting by your own criteria.

brokentone, what is quality in your opinion? Is it connection speed? If it is more complex than that, what would be the best way to quantify it? Most hotels offer free WiFi, so it is easy to skip hotels with paid WiFi. We will add more filters (including this one) soon.

"Most hotels offer free WiFi"

This may be true in the US but I don't think it's necessarily true in Europe. Too many hotels in the UK/Ireland claim to offer "internet access" which turns out to mean no wifi (or mysteriously permanently broken wifi) and one ancient PC in reception which nobody can tell you the password for. Germany was better for wifi but often had paid wifi in the rooms and free wifi only in reception, which I guess still lets them advertise it as "free".

Still, I like the site idea. If I could use the site to avoid the above, all the better.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#25
post #11

I hope this catches on and it can be used to shame and blame hotel chains. I can't recall a single instance where hotel wifi, let alone wire, as even remotely fast. These hotels normally charge $20-50 per day of internet and they provide shitty service. It drive me mad. I have learned that you can complain and get some significant bonus points out of it. I wish more people complained about the internet service in ord…

In my experience Microtels have pretty good wifi and I have recently been seeking them out when possible for this very reason.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#27

I'd like latency as well as speed. A lot of hotels I have been to have really high ping times.

Having stayed at a couple of the reviewed hotels in Brazil that get a good rating, you would think everything was fine.

But latency is a HUGE problem in Brazil[1], and in probably any country that's far removed from the major backbones.

Yes, I can watch Youtube just fine in Brazil but I can't tell you the number of times that Skype video or other highly interactive apps wouldn't start or conk out because of poor latency.

The public has no comprehension of latency, but it's really important that this gets factored in somehow, especially for places like Brazil that generally have poor latency.

[1] http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Wi-Fi_and_Internet_se...

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#28

Good reason to get a Clear hotspot, no more looking for the working WIFI connection, or cafe password, or trying to get the "I agree" TOS page to load. (PS: I'm not invested in Clear, have no affiliation.)

Sadly, it seems like Clear no longer takes new customers.

I'm grandfathered in... at least for now.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#30
post #13

I used to do consulting and traveled 100%. The term "High Speed Internet" is a common misnomer with Hotels, and was a bane of my existence, because it typically meant > 56k but These were with Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton hotels, mind you. If aggregaters like Hipmunk could incorporate this speed data, the way that they have with in-flight wifi, then hopefully there will be a push to improve this standard.

As a fellow traveling worker, I find the same problem. For this subset of society, wifi speed is a crucial deciding factor. Top 3, for me, at least.

Wouldn't you just get a mobile hotspot? Or are you traveling to places with poor cell reception?
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