Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
In Hyatt and Marriott family hotels in the USA. I haven't had problems using zoom to host meetings from my laptop, although my elite status tends to automatically give me the faster internet if a hotel offers it.
If you don't use a virtual background, think about where you want to position yourself for the meeting. IMO it's unprofessional to see a bed in the background, and you might not want it to be obvious that you're in a hotel room (sign on the back of the door, those random cardboard signs that have largely vanished due to COVID-19, view out the window, etc.).
It still varies from property to property. In Charlotte, NC, for example, the Residence Inn Charlotte Uptown and Marriott Charlotte City Center properties were great, while the Le Meridien Charlotte and the Fairfield Inn & Suites Charlotte Uptown both had pretty dodgy internet access to the point where I had trouble both with video calls as well as streaming Netflix or Disney on my Firestick. In the Fairfield, I ended up having to sit on the balcony tethered to my cell phone in order to have meetings for work.
Sometimes complaining to the desk will get someone to investigate and maybe reboot a router or access point, sometimes it just gets shoulder shrugs and "nothing we can do about that".
To answer the other question, if your hotel doesn't have good WiFi, there's always a Starbucks or other coffee shop nearby that does, and I've jumped into many meetings over the years from places like Starbucks, McDonalds, etc.