Hotel WiFi Test has released a new report that ranks hotel chains by Wi-Fi quality. Two characteristics of hotel Wi-Fi are considered: the quality of the Wi-Fi and whether in-room Wi-Fi is free.
The report contains a global ranking and separate rankings for the United States, Europe and Asia.
The chain to which a hotel belongs is one of the best predictors of Wi-Fi performance. Therefore, when travelers know how hotel chains are ranked overall, they can choose a specific hotel with better Wi-Fi even if they don't have information about the Wi-Fi quality in that hotel.
In this report, a hotel judged as having adequate Wi-Fi must provide an expected download speed of at least 3 Mbps (the Netflix recommendation for SD-quality streaming) and an upload speed of 500 kbps (the Skype recommendation for high-quality non-HD video calling). The Free Wi-Fi percentage is calculated as a ratio of hotels that offer free in-room Wi-Fi to all hotels for which the Wi-Fi price structure and availability is known.
Key Takeaways
- Nordic Choice is the number one chain in the global rankings, with 85 percent of its hotels offering adequate Wi-Fi and 100 percent of its hotels offering free Wi-Fi.
- Marriott took the top spot in the United States, but the results are not that impressive compared with the top hotel chains from the global chart. In addition, only 17 percent of all Marriott hotels in the United States provide free Wi-Fi.
- Hilton has much better Wi-Fi quality in Europe (73% of its hotels offer adequate Wi-Fi) than in the United States (25%).