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Better, faster, “free-er” wi-fi at Hilton, others

(Photo: The Digitel / Flickr)

(Photo: The Digitel / Flickr)

Today Hilton (finally) announced that starting later this year it would offer free wi-fi to all guests except those who book through online travel agencies such as Expedia.

Until today, Hilton lagged behind most other major hotel chains in rolling out more liberal complimentary wi-fi offerings.

There are a few wrinkles to Hilton’s offer:

First, only top-tier Diamond HHonors members get free “premium” wi-fi— you know, the faster option that allows users to stream video, upload and download photos and crank through emails with large attachments. This starts in the “second quarter.”

Everyone else gets “standard” wi-fi— you know, the one that allow you to skim through email, Twitter and Facebook, check flight status or make an OpenTable reservation but that’s about it. (This goes into effect in August.) If you want a faster connection, you’ll have to pay up.

Unfortunately, new free wi-fi policies don’t apply at Hilton properties where there is an irritating “resort fee.” (UPDATE from Hilton: Diamond members who book directly through a proprietary Hilton channel or through one of our corporate travel partners will be upgraded to complimentary premium Wi-Fi at our hotels where there is a resort charge.)

Hilton was smart to add that guests who book via corporate travel departments or agencies will still get the free wi-fi.  When Marriott announced its “free” wi-fi, bookings made via corporate travel managers and corporate travel agencies were not included, leading to loud squawks.

Related: Hilton’s current double points promo

So far, Hyatt’s free wi-fi policy comes with the fewest strings attached— starting last month, Hyatt offers every guest fast, free wifi, regardless of how they booked their stay or their loyalty program status. Still, only Diamond and Platinum Gold Passport members get free premium wi-fi.

What are your thoughts about the difference between “premium” or “enhanced” versus “standard” hotel wi-fi? Is a standard connection enough for you? Please leave your comments below!

Here are the details of Hilton’s announcement today:

Screen Shot 2015-03-02 at 9.03.22 AM

What are your thoughts about the difference between “premium” or “enhanced” versus “standard” hotel wi-fi? Is a standard connection enough for you? Please leave your comments below!

—Chris McGinnis

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New transcon biz class + United mistake + Seattle + Cruise for miles + Marriott expiring
Southwest growth spurt + Better food? + Wi-fi on Delta + Hilton double + Whatever!

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Which countries have fastest hotel wi-fi? Surprising answer

wi-fi

Do you insist on consistently good quality and wide availability of in-room Wi-Fi at hotels? Then you better travel overseas, according to a new report from HotelWiFiTest, the website that tracks these things worldwide.

The U.S. ranks fairly high up on the list for the availability of free hotel Wi-Fi, but fairly low down for quality. The report notes that “quality” doesn’t mean super-fast Internet; rather, it means “the percentage of hotels that offer adequate WiFi quality in a given geographical area.” It defines “adequate” as download speeds of at least 3 Mbps — sufficient for SD-quality video streaming — and uploads at 500 kbps.

wifi

“For most travelers, having super-fast and consistently stable WiFi is a great bonus, but their first priority is ensuring that basic quality expectations for Internet access are met,” the company noted.

Worldwide, Asia offers the best Wi-Fi quality, the report notes, available at 50 percent of the region’s hotels. Europe is second at 46 percent, and the U.S. is third at 35 percent. On a country-by-country basis, 92 percent of South Korea’s hotels offer quality Wi-Fi, followed by Japan (84.9 percent), the Ukraine (!) at 82.1 percent, Switzerland at 79.8 percent and Romania at 78 percent. Ranking just below those countries, in order, are Hong Kong, Sweden, Norway, Taiwan, Hungary and Russia. The U.S. comes in at 40th place worldwide (35.9 percent), just above Malaysia, Turkey, Spain and France.

According to HotelWiFiTest, that means 79 percent of the world’s countries have better quality hotel Wi-Fi than the U.S.

My two favorite airlines. Yours?

The report found that the opposite trend holds true for availability of free in-room Wi-Fi, however, with that amenity provided at 85.4 percent of U.S. hotels — about the same as Ukraine, Taiwan and Turkey, but still behind Norway (92.4 percent), Sweden (91 percent) and Russia (90.1 percent). (That U.S. figure should increase since major chains like Hyatt, Marriott and Starwood recently decided to make basic free Wi-Fi available across all their brands.)

wi-fi

HotelWiFiTest’s report also looked at individual cities. In the 20 U.S. cities covered, Portland was number one in the Wi-Fi quality rankings (available at 66.7 percent of its hotels), 10 points ahead of second-place Seattle. Following in order behind Seattle are Albuquerque, Orlando and Chicago. Los Angeles ranked 7th (46.3 percent), New York 8th (44.5 percent) and San Francisco 10th (42.7 percent). Of the 20 U.S. cities rated, Atlanta came in at the bottom, with quality Wi-Fi at just 22.5 percent of its hotels.

Related: Ranking inflight wi-fi by airline

U.S. cities with the highest percentage of free Wi-Fi hotels are Portland, Albuquerque, Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Denver, all above 80 percent. Ranking 20th out of 20 for free Wi-Fi was Boston at 56.6 percent, just below Washington D.C. (58 percent).

Overseas destinations outdo all of the U.S. cities in terms of Wi-Fi quality, the report concluded. Of the 50 cities worldwide covered in the report, the one with the best availability of quality Wi-Fi is Stockholm (at 88.9 percent of its hotels), followed by Budapest (84.4 percent), Tokyo (81.9 percent), Dublin (77.5 percent) and Montreal (69 percent). Atlanta ranked 49th on the list of 50, exceeding only Albufeira, Portgual.

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Marriott’s new “free” wi-fi: Is it fast enough? [POLL]

Marriott wifi

Today Marriott announced that it would offer free wi-fi to all Rewards members at all its brands, worldwide, including Ritz-Carlton, starting in January. That’s 42 million members getting free wi-fi at more than 3,800 hotels around the world. That’s huge!

Or is it? (See poll below)

Dig into Marriott’s release about the plan, and you’ll see that the free wi-fi is the “standard” or basic version- at many hotels that’s only fast enough for a quick check of email or flight status. Plus, to get free wi-fi you have to book directly with Marriott.com or with a hotel– travel agency or other third party bookings won’t qualify.

Have you ever tried to do anything else with the basic version of wi-fi at Marriott or any other hotel? To me, basic wi-fi is now basically useless given today’s much bigger bandwidth requirements. But hey, it’s better than paying $16.95 for a crappy connection, right? (PLEASE TAKE POLL BELOW)

How do you feel about "basic" hotel wi-fi?

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Please click the clear-looking or “vote” button

Some good news: Marriott is giving free “enhanced” wi-fi to its elite Platinum and Gold Rewards members. If that’s not you, you’ll have to pay up for the fatter pipes.

Helpful: Choose your hotel based on its wi-fi speed

In any case, Marriott’s announcement is more evidence that it pays off to join nearly every hotel loyalty program at at least the basic level. Marriott joins other brands like IHG,  Kimpton and Fairmont in offering free wi-fi– but only to registered members of their loyalty programs. Best Western was the first chain to offer free wi-fi at all its hotels way back in 2004.

Bonus: How to get 50,000 Marriott Rewards points

Tell us what you think about Marriott’s big move…and what you think about “tiered” hotel wi-fi speeds. >PLEASE scroll up and take our poll!< 

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Some flyers "get what they pay for" with free Wi-Fi

How’s that free holiday in-flight Wi-Fi working out for ya?

As many frequent travelers know by now, Google is sponsoring free in-flight Wi-Fi on AirTran, Delta and Virgin America through January 2. That’s a great thing!

However, as often happens when something is free, you end up getting what you pay for.

Over the last several days I’ve heard from several readers experiencing frequent outages or poor connections when using in-flight Wi-Fi. This sounded unusual to me because, as a frequent user of the Gogo system, I’ve been very impressed with its ease of use, great connections and lack of any technical difficulties at all.

But it sounds like that’s not the case this month. Here’s a sampling of emails I’ve received:

>“Just flew Denver-Atlanta. Bumped off three times.” -R.S.

>“I had lots of outages on a flight to Las Vegas two weeks ago. I would have rather paid and had it work.” -J.B.

>“Last week I flew up to Charlotte from Atlanta and to Miami this week. Gogo fails constantly and is unreliable now. I would rather be given an option to pay for the connection, versus what I experience now.” –D.O.

The TICKET contacted a spokesperson for Aircell/Gogo to inquire about the outages. Here’s her response:

Anytime we give away Gogo access for free, we see the usage soar through the roof.  This holiday promotion has been no different and almost every day is a new usage record for us.  Pushing the boundaries certainly makes the system run a bit slower, and there are some situations in which we’re limiting the number of users who can get on the web on a given flight.  Though a passenger might perceive that we’re having a technical issue, the reality is that we’re managing the network such that we permit the maximum number of passengers to use Gogo without degrading the experience too much.  As you can imagine, that’s a tricky balance to strike – and while it has the potential to leave a few travelers unhappy, we think most are pretty pleased.

I’ve also heard from other airline insiders that the problem is especially acute when flying around the Atlanta area. This of course is due to the fact that both AirTran and Delta are the two carriers operating the most flights in the world with in-flight Wi-Fi—and the pipe is just not fat enough. Apparently, recent usage levels are close to 50 percent of passengers, up from the normal 5-10 percent.

So enjoy it while it’s free—if you can get on.  Connections should improve when the freebie is over on January 3.

Have YOU experienced any recent connectivity issues lately when using Wi-Fi on AirTran, Delta or Virgin America? LET US KNOW what happened! Leave your comments below.

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