Comments on: Why hotels don’t get WiFi: 2 – Coverage

By: David

David — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:09:26 +0000

Thanks for the comments chaps. I’m currently in private guesthouses in the Balkans, and thus well and truly back to the bad old days of internet cafes. But I don’t really expect it in those places – it’s the city hotels where it drives me mad.

My Swiss experience has been much the same as yours, Matthew. Ludicrously expensive scratchcard system – often through Swisscom. It is the same with a lot of small town motels and resorts in Australia – they work with printed receipts from a central provider. Usually stupidly expensive and entirely unreliable.

Not been to Vietnam, so don’t know much about wireless standards there. Cook Islands are bad, I’ll agree, but somewhat expected. It’s the same with just about all of the Pacific Islands. I was in Samoa and Vanuatu in May/ June and both were practically dead zones.

And as an aside – that’s not the Rosie Niven who used to go to Sheffield university and write a few articles for the Steel Press is it? If so, hi

By: Rosie Niven

Rosie Niven — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:57:09 +0000

Great post David – RTed via Twitter from Tim Richards. I’d nominate Vietnam for a place with excellent WiFi in hotels. Hanoi is especially good, with so many budget hotels offering unencrypted connections packed closely together. If the hotel network doesn’t work, you simply piggyback on another.

I’m currently on the latter stages of a round-the-world trip and have found Vietnam, the US and Canada to be the best countries for WiFi. The Cook Islands were the worst, but that’s understandable. Australia and New Zealand are poor too, though they have less excuse.

At the moment I’m in Mcleodganj in Northern India and picking up a lot of unencrypted networks, but most prove a let down. Of course, the downside of having great hotel WiFi is you spend more time inside online and less time getting out and exploring.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:19:16 +0000

I liked the hotel in Spain that said ‘Bring a LAN cable. The wifi MAY not work in your room, but the LAN certainly does.’

And, if you don’t have a LAN cable, they’ll rent you one (€1.50 for 24 hours, if I remember right)

By: Matthew Teller

Matthew Teller — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:30:18 +0000

Spot on (again). But then again, since I happen to be in Switzerland at the moment, the flipside of, say, the Hotel des Alpes in Neuchatel – where I had to move rooms last week to get a solid connection – is, say, the Hotel Krone in Solothurn, where a few days ago I piggybacked on a fast, free unsecured wifi connection from one of the neighbours without even trying.

Shall I tell you what’s worse here? The huge majority of hotels that offer internet to guests, do so through a system of paid scratchcards: Swisscom, Monzoon or some other company has moved in, fixed up wifi throughout the hotel, and then intends to sit on the profits of selling exorbitantly overpriced scratchcards for ever after. And I mean overpriced: 4 pounds for 30 minutes, 12 pounds for 3 hours and (wait for it) 25 quid for 24 hours!

Reception at Hotel Metropol in St Gallen yesterday told me that their guests don’t really want the internet – she figured this out because she said the 30-minute cards are the only ones they ever sell… Doh!

This, dear Mr/Ms Swiss Hotelier, is like welcoming me with a smile one minute, and kicking me in the goolies and stuffing doggydoo down my underpants the next. Scratchcards say ‘Not only don’t I care about my hotel, I also don’t understand the hospitality business well enough to invest in having my own network, and – of course – I certainly don’t give a toss about you and your needs’. Nice welcome.

Currently at Hotel Appenzell, using their fast, reliable, free, wired LAN. What a relief.