grumpymonkey

The Beverly Hilton has been so bad during my last few stays that I've decided not to stay with them any longer. There are other reasons for making the switch (I'm moving to Hyatt, since they've got properties where I travel most frequently), but the wireless connection at the Hyatt Century City was smooth, reliable and cheaper than any Hilton property I've stayed at in the past three years.

fmkgb

In the past when I've had slow internet at a full service Hilton I've called the internet support line and sometimes they can push more bandwith directly into the room. It has helped. The last property I tried this at was in Tel Aviv. It's worth a phone call...if nothing else it may reinforce to Hilton Corporate the problem.

mrEzE

Just adding my frustration with Hilton's internet speeds. It seems to be capped at .5 Mbps at all the Embassy Suites I have been staying at lately. Pathetic.

eimsand

Hampton Inn - Tacoma, WA

1.66 Mbps down (tolerable).
0.36 Mbps up

(I'd be better off whistling into the phone line with that upload speed .)

Astoru

I work for a Hampton Inn in Upstate NY and I have to say, I myself as someone who went to college for IT, find the internet here to be horrendous. We pay an obscene amount of money per month for internet with AT&T and our hotel is only an 80 room hotel so we're small, yet we get terrible speeds. I have to let 3 minute long youtube videos load longer than the video actually is. God forbid you try to watch netflix it takes 20 minutes just to buffer the video so you can watch it, then if you're unlucky which most are you have to re-buffer because your "internet connection has slowed". We have people who stay with us that use the internet everyday for business, video conferencing etc. and all we get is complaints about how slow our internet is (wired and wireless). We've had a guest who has been staying with us for as long as I have work here (a little more than a year now) and he almost left the hotel because of the speed. We even "upgraded" recently to an even more expensive internet. We are paying 1500$ a month for internet. If I was paying that much for internet I would be completely LIVID about the speeds I was getting. I just ran a speed test and we're shooting .29 Mbps. This is just ridiculous but nobody in management listens to the only guy with ANY IT experience what-so-ever. Bogus.

bkafrick

I think Hampton would say watching/streaming videos on the "free hi-speed internet" they provide violates the terms of service somehow...

Personally, I think its a crock of crap.

$1500/mo to a hotel shouldnt be "obscene" though. Most of the hamptons I stay at are priced over $100/night. Even at a occupancy census of 60%, this is a monthly revenue rate of $180,000. $1500 is about 3/4 of a % of that.

Its a real expense, and hotels need to start considering it a real expense. People are demanding it, and the demand is only going to increase as more and more people bring wifi devices with them on trips.

theTheme

I stay at Hampton Inns in 6 states and I run speed test in all of them. Some of the numbers that are posted here are better than anything I get 99% of the time. .20 down and .10-.15 up is the most common that I get.

I don't know if the porn thing is true, but the internet is faster in the morning (100-150% faster) and if you want to use Skype you should try to call before 6 if you can. Otherwise it's like talking to a White Stripes video.

I'm not defending Hilton, especially since the uniformity of my results suggests traffic caps not over subscription, but I do know that there is a tremendous amount of variability in what is available locally. Major cities have no excuses, but when I can get internet at some of the smallest most out of the way properties, it does seem kind of like a miracle.

Points Scrounger

I stayed at a Doubletree recently where dial-up might've been faster! It took over an hour to download a file that normally would be 10 minutes at most usually.

hamptonInternetSoSlow

The Hampton in Alamosa, CO is no different. .49 mbps according to speedtest.net. I think the dude is onto something with the .5 cap. This really does suck though. We use video chat a lot at work and I shouldn't have to go somewhere else to do that.

I wonder if the decision is more of a cost-savings thing or more of a "make people use their outmoded TVs in their hotel rooms to buy content there instead of watching netflix and hulu." I don't like people controlling me like that...

saneman

I travel to W Palm Beach. The Hiltons (Doubletree, HGI, Homewood) in the Palm Beach Gardens/Jupiter area all had pathetic pitiful internet speeds . THe HGI would be such a tease giving me speeds upto 0.8 Mbps for a couple of seasonds then go down to 100K or 150Kbps

This year, things are different. I was at the Doubletree in Palm Beach Gardens and I was looking forward to get the free upgrade to their wired high speed. But it was gone. Now it's all wifi. I was pissed. But then I noticed their wifi speed has been jacked up and they upgraded their wifi's spotty coverage. I was getting close to 2MBps though it averaged in the low 1s. Not great, but not bad either.

Now , I am at the Hilton Garden Inn in the same area and the speed is almost as good as the Doubletree. Does the HHonors account recognize your GOld or Diamond status and autaomatically channel more bandwidth to your connection??? I don't think that is the case, but just curious anyway.

I will try watching NHL Gamecenter and see if I can watch it at decent quality.,

bkafrick

Ah! Thats the problem. You'll all start streaming and then the bandwidth is all gone.

saneman

I am happy to say that both the Doubletree and Hilton Garden Inn in Palm Beach Gardens have upgraded their internet speed. I was able to watch a hockey game at an acceptable speed, rarely in the max res setting, but usually in the next best setting.

Xynix

Consider that most of these properties were set up with an Internet connection a couple years ago. Think how differently we use the Internet today as a society than we did even 2 or 3 years ago. Consider how many high-speed connections are required today vs 2 years ago and you'll begin to understand why hotel internet connections are so laggy. Also consider than 3 to 5 year contracts were signed based on the expectation that you would have 20 or 30 business-men downloading email and porn. Now you have 100+ guests downloading Netflix or alternative streams. Every kid has an iPad or alternative device and they are also uploading / downloading / facebooking / youtubing.. You get the point.

It will take a couple years, in my opinion, before the hotels can catch up to the device-heavy society we find ourselves in.

bkafrick

Thats not how contracts work. You're not locked in for a certain about of years at a certain speed and thats it. You can always buy more bandwidth from your ISP at any point. You may wish to extend your contract by doing so. Hotels are free to address this concern at any point. Some simply choose not to.