Radisson SAS today announced that their hotels now will offer free broadband for guests. Most hotels also have wifi. So now you can surf from the lounge or stream “The girl from Ipanema” in the elevator!
This is a good thing. Start the competition! Hotel wifi has been too expensive for long, and hopefully others (like Best Western) will follow. See this post at Flickr.
I recently paid NOK 50 (7,84 US Dollars or 6,33 Euro) for 30 minutes in a Norwegian hotel. It was at Fru Haugans hotel in Mosjøen, Norway. Way too expensive, even though it was better paying a lot for it than not getting it - which was the option at the other two hotels I asked at in Mosjøen.
Doc Searls posts about ridiculous prices for broadband at Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston. 56K is free, Premium service is $10 day. Bally’s in Las Vegas is even worse.
If you experience bad service with wifi at hotels, upload a screenshot or even a picture from the hotel at Flickr. Tag it “bad service”.
Hotelchatter lists best wifi hotels 2006. The winners are Kimpton hotels.
Kimpton doesn’t count on their lobby WiFi network to reach the top floors of their buildings, instead, at the hotels we visited, Kimpton actually had two separate WiFi networks–one for the lobby and the other for the guest rooms. Both networks are easily accessible by clicking on a standard terms and conditions. Furthermore, during our Kimpton visits, friendly staffers went out of their way to ask us if we were getting a good reliable WiFi signal in both the lobby and our room, and guess what? We were.