To think if we pay for high speed Internet access

[orangeandlemons]

In a hotel, at £8.00 per night, we should have got state of the art wifi, and not a shitty little broken cable that didn't even fit an ipad!

This was in a well known hotel chain, and am pretty miffed at that cost, as couldn't MN.

Very typical alas and should think you deserve ££££s compensation for distress and inconvenience caused by lack of access to MN .

Fortunatley more hotels are offering free wifi. I was at DaysInn a couple of nights ago and their wifi was free and worked quite well. Roll on all hotels providing reasonable wifi.

YANBU they should have provided something better given the fee - though maybe the terms said it was an ethernet cable (or whatever it was) and not wifi. Did you complain, did they refund?

Not Holiday Inn, was it? They are dreadful - top dollar, and half the time you have to go down to the bar to have any wifi at all. Refund of fee, at the very least, commiserations.

Yes it was a Holiday Inn! I didn't give them a very good write up on Trip Advisor

I just don't understand this Internet thing and hotels. Why can't they just all offer wifi in every room as standard? I don't mind paying for it. It's so hit and miss, some have/ some don't/some only in reception/ some free. The whole nation is pretty well hooked up to the Internet, so why don't hotels just offer it, as a matter of course

Maybe the more users of hotels stop booking places that do not include wifi as standard the sooner they will get the hint.

Sure it costs them to install it and for the data use but split across the number of rooms, surely it is a low cost, probably similar to providing coffee making facilities.

Interesting article by a traveller who also has hotel GM experience, so sees it from both sides.

The free in communal lounge but paid for in-room option seems a reasonable compromise to me.

Some places give x number of minutes free, then rest paid.

If paying then you expect something reasonable, if it is free then you expect that it may be slow.

But I'm not bothered about paying for it. But at eight quid for a shitty cable is a bit steep. Eight quid for the ability to connect more than one item to Winifred would seem more reasonable. I have stayed in hotels where Internet connection is free

winifred! Wtf? Wifi

Get a PAYG mifi for going away.

They're brill, and save the whole problem - If the hotel has free wifi, then you don't use your mifi, and if it doesn't, then you're sorted. it may also be useful in other places

Payg mifi? Please explain this wonderful thing...

Payg mifi is like a mobile phone but only for data. It provider a hotspot which you can connect to. However it relies on getting a mobile phone signal on whatever network it is on. I have stayed in hotels where there was no mobile signal, least not on the network my phone is on (Three).

I need to book a hotel room... The hotel requires me to call them at 10p per minute from a landline (more from a mobile) because their online booking system won't cope with a discounted room booking! On the plus side, they say on their site that they provide free wifi.

Cost? Is it cheap?

What nannynick said

As an aside, my mifi is a different provider to my phone, which has unlimited data, and different again to dh's(!) so I can use any as a tether - so I don't have the signal issue.

Cost varies dependent on provider.

Mine came preloaded and valid for a year as a gift from DH so I couldn't tell you the price.

Think Money supermarket gives you the latest deals though.

A cable for Internet access sounds incredibly dated. These days I would have thought at least half the people wanting Internet access would be using tablets, mobiles, kindles etc which only work with wifi. Holiday Inn has a dated image though, so that would fit.

Hardware seems to vary, around £50. Data packages vary in price, can't get Three Price Guide to load on my iPad... So can't find PAYG data price.