A new report ranks hotel chains and cities by the percentage of hotels with poor WiFi performance.
According to the report of Hotelwifitest.com, a hotel judged as having adequate WiFi must provide an expected download speed of at least 2Mbps, an upload speed of 1Mbps, latency not exceeding 500ms, and an average stability rating of at least 3 out of 5. Upload testing, latency testing, and stability feedback are relatively new additions to the testing process; therefore, for some hotels, download speed was the only factor being measured. Furthermore, this report does not differentiate between paid and free WiFi.
The chain of a hotel is one of the best predictors of WiFi performance. Also, travelers can usually choose their preferred hotel chain in a given area or city. The first table of this report presents the 20 most tested hotel chains and ranks them by their percentage of hotels with poor WiFi.
Travelers who want to minimize their chances of having poor hotel WiFi ruin their online experience should choose hotel chains closer to the top of the table.
The second table ranks the most tested cities worldwide by the same criteria.
For most travelers, changing their destination city is not an option, but this information can still act as a friendly warning, a suggestion to spend more time reading hotel reviews, and a strong recommendation to book an accommodation property with tested WiFi, if possible.
This report provides valuable advice for choosing a hotel based on chains and global destinations. However, it is always better to check WiFi quality before booking a hotel. In some cities, this is very easy to do: there are 180 tested hotels in New York alone; 42 of them have an expected speed of more than 10Mbps.
