moulder3

(Mods: I didn't see a thread about this, so I thought I'd let users add hotels & I will update to this initial posting)

Ignoring for the moment that I believe Starwood should have gone the route of free internet (at least to golds & plats) awhile ago, I'm quickly realizing that I doubt many hotels have the infrastructure to do so!

Having stayed at 10 different Starwood hotels in the past two months only ONE hotel had a true "high speed" connection, and that was only 1.4 meg/sec (Le Meridien King Edward)!

It's unacceptable that Starwood doesn't maintain a brand standard on what speeds are required before a hotel can boast offering 'high speed internet.' For example, today I was unable to view a WebEx presentation (not exactly something that requires lots of bandwidth--and something most business travelers occasionally use) because the speed offered at my current hotel, Westin Charlotte, is only 0.23 meg/sec--and that's in the middle of the day! At these speeds I can forget about watching streaming video tonight, as well.

Since most home internet connections are now 7-10meg/sec, I have no idea why Starwood doesn't force hotels to upgrade, as well. From my perspective, there's nothing more irritating than realizing I'm paying $12.95 (as I am today) for speeds that are almost dial-up internet!

So until Starwood addresses this issue, I invite you all to post your speedtests (via speedtest.net) and slow internet issues here.

**Update 10/8/09: William (StarwoodLurker) has agreed to compile monthly reports to send to Starwood management! (Thanks William!) He asks that we give speedtest results (so that we have hard proof of the primarily awful speeds). PLEASE make sure to copy/paste the link to your speedtest, don't just post the results. I will continue to update the master table as time permits. Thanks to all who have contributed thus far and let's keep these results coming! Hopefully we can force Starwood to deal with the hotels offering "high speed" internet at speeds that are often slower than dial-up.

**Update 2/22/10: All comments posted before 2/22 have been added to the main post (sorry for the delay).

I want to briefly comment that while I'm glad to see more hotels qualifying as having "good" internet speeds, a 1 meg/sec internet connection (the base requirement for a "good" speed) is still FAR from true "high speed" internet. It still bothers me that there are only a few reported SPG hotels anywhere in the world that exceed 5 meg/sec, while almost EVERY Holiday Inn Express I've stayed at is at least 6 meg/sec. The reason I made the bar so low for qualifying as a "good" hotel was only because I was afraid (and this thread has helped to confirm) that if I put Starwood on the same standard as other hotel chains, they'd fail miserably.

Since I've not heard that Starwood is addressing this issue (and instead may make matters worse, by offering free internet at all hotels to Plats--even though it's a well-deserved benefit), I'm now severely limiting my Starwood stays and I'd suggest anyone else concerned with internet speeds do the same.

Hyatt comped me their Diamond status a few months ago (which includes free internet at all their hotels) and I'm regularly seeing 7-10 meg/sec connections at their hotels. In fact, the slowest connection I've had at Hyatt was 2.43 meg/sec which I think speaks volumes about how behind the times Starwood truly is.

I will continue to update this board, but I can't say I'll be holding my breath as we wait for a corporate mandate to come down from Starwood to their hotels.

**Update 6/4/15: Yes, it's been five years since my last update on this thread. First off, I still can't believe that in 2015 not one major hotel chain has publicly stated what it considers to be acceptable internet speeds for their guests (whether via free or paid option). Since I know the majority of us business travelers need (not want) fast, reliable internet more than almost any other hotel amenity besides a bed. While I do think internet speeds are (overall) getting better at the major chains, there simply shouldn't be an excuse for any Starwood hotel to not offer at least 3-4 megs/sec per guest. While I'm sure we all have our pet peeves, mine is that hotels (both Starwood & Hyatt hotels have adopted this) seem to cap speeds per connection. While I understand they're doing this to provide a consistant offering, I don't understand why they don't do it by ROOM, rather than USER. Why should I only get 2 meg/sec on my laptop, while the family in the next room has four devices that are all using 2 meg/sec? We both paid roughly the same for our rooms but they're getting collectively 8 meg/sec while I'm having difficulty doing a video conference with a client.


SLOW Hotels (under 1 meg/sec):

Westin Charlotte


Sheraton Eatontown (NJ)


Sheraton Austin
http://www.speedtest.net/result/569724068.png

Sheraton La Jolla
http://www.speedtest.net/result/579044000.png

Westin Bonaventure
http://www.speedtest.net/result/578557007.png

Westin Richmond
http://www.speedtest.net/result/598149031.png

Sheraton Centre (Montreal)


Sheraton Suites Wilmington (DE)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/611743042.png

Shearaton Portsmouth (NH)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/620975159.png

Westin Columbus (OH)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/648344862.png

Sheraton Springfield at Monarch Place (MA)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/713030190.png

Westin Detriot Airport - DFW (MI)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/714086410.png

Four Points Norwalk (CT)

Four Points Leominster (MA)

Aloft Washington National Harbor

Westin Shanghai

Le Meridian Barcelona

Sheraton Maui

Sheraton Saigon

Le Meridien Bangkok

W Silicon Valley
(throttled to 256k)

Sheraton Kampala

Westin Nusa Dua (lobby area)

Sheraton Suites Columbus

Four Points San Francisco Airport

Sheraton Pentaluma (CA)

Sheraton Gunther - San Antonio, TX

The Joule (Luxury Collection) - Dallas, TX

Westin Palo Alto

Four Points Shanghai Daning

Vedema Resort (Santorini, Greece)

Sheraton Manhattan (NYC)

Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers

Le Meridien Wien (Vienna)

Westin SFO Airport
(reportedly throttled to 768k up/down)

Westin Governor Morris (NJ)
(reportedly 0.17k d/l, 0.64 u/l)

aLoft Minneapolis



GOOD Hotels (over 1 meg/sec, & where they actually offer what they advertise--true "high speed" internet)

Westin Edina Galleria
http://www.speedtest.net/result/555180808.png (via wired connection)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/555177578.png (via wireless connection)

aloft Montreal airport


Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino (reportedly as high as 20 meg/sec!)

Sheraton Edison (NJ) - Note: free internet for plats!


Sheraton Wild Horse Resort
http://www.speedtest.net/result/594579403.png

Four Points Cocoa Beach
http://www.speedtest.net/result/623838473.png

Hotel Joule - Luxury Collection (TX)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/631981526.png

Sheraton Suites Philadelphia Airport - PHL (PA)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/644807871.png

Four Points Indianapolis Carmel
http://www.speedtest.net/result/646805311.png

The Fairfax at Embassy Row (DC)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/653742208.png

Sheraton Bradley Airport - BDL (CT)
http://www.speedtest.net/result/713997057.png

Le Meridian King Edward

Sheraton Overland Park

Sheraton Stockholm

Le Meridien Kota Kinabalu

Le Meridien Kuala Lumpur

Westin Dublin

Westin Alexandria (VA)

St Regis Monarch Beach Resort

Luxury Collection - Hotel Kämp (Helsinki)

Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina

mahasamatman

When you're on a shared connection, you should forget about it anyway. I would hope the hotels' software is smart enough to throttle back bandwidth hogs when there are multiple users.

And most home internet connections have one user, too. I'll bet that if you were the only user on a hotel's connection, you'd get great bandwidth.

Steve M

A WebEx is certainly something that should work properly.

That's not below dial-up internet. It's over 4x the speed of a 56k dial-up connection.

That's where you lost me. I like a fast Internet connection as much as anyone else, but the notion that such a connection should be fast enough to watch a high-bandwidth video stream, especially in the evening hours where many other guests may want to do the same, is perhaps a tall order.

Consider what even 5% of hotel guests using a connection at that speed to download video would add up to as far as a back-end requirement, and you quickly see what the problem is.

moulder3

I realize it's a shared connection, however I don't think my watching streaming video makes me a "bandwidth hog" and since I'm paying $12.95 per day (roughly 30-40% of the monthly cost of high speed internet at home) I certainly feel I'm entitled to use it for that...

This is exactly my argument. Starwood seems ok with their properties having hotel-wide connections that are equivalent to the speed of a single home internet connection. Office buildings don't have problems offering reasonable internet speeds to every user. Is it really unreasonable that a hotel should be held to the same standard? Why can't they invest in the infrastructure to maintain 3-5 meg/sec connection per user, especially if we're (frequently) paying an absurd $13 a day to access their internet? Other hotel chains are starting to widen the gap in this area. I've stayed in 3 Holiday Inn hotels recently, and ALL of them had speeds between 1-5 meg/sec and they offer free internet to all guests!

KENNECTED

"High-Speed" Internet @ SPG Hotels

KENNECTED

Are you willing to pay more for it?

moulder3

I might be, but I'm already being ripped of for what can't be defined as anything other than false advertising!

How come 3* chains like Holiday Inn can not only offer internet free to all guests and also offer speeds that are frequently ten times faster than Starwood hotels, though?!? (One could reasonably assume that by offering free internet, Holiday Inn also has many more guests using their internet, too!)

Keith009

The internet service was rather poor at the Sheraton Diana Majestic in Milan. It wasn't slow, but it was down rather frequently.

vandalby

Oh please, we're already typically paying $12 - $20 per night for internet access at many properties, and you're suggesting that we pay more for something as simple as increased bandwidth!?!?

I think that moulder3's comment is pretty well on target. At the rates that we're currently paying, one would reasonably expect a higher speed experience.

todorovic

I usually don't pay attention who the ISP is but wouldn't it make sense to outsource this to a large scale ISP like Hyatt did with going with t-mobile. That way the ISP pays for infrastructure and maintenance and the hotel still gets a small and stable revenue stream. Granted, they wouldn't be having an 80% profit margin (as I suspect it is now).

five4fighting81

Aloft Washington National Harbor was rather slow, couldn't pull up flyertalk!

bdraco

Wirelessly posted (blackberry 8900: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_8; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.3 Safari/531.9)

When I am traveling on business this is almost the only item that makes a hotel a no deal for me. If the internet doesn't work right on a such a trip its right out the door to the next hotel choice.

Worst Internet List:

Westin Shanghai -- 80% packet loss to the states . Very slow. I always book at the le meridian instead now.

Le Meridian Barcelona -- useless until about 3am (for the last two years its been that way no less) as soon as the W opens I will no longer book here.

In the middle:

Hotel Pulitzer (Amsterdam) has fast internet if you can get it to work right. There are in serious need of an it overhaul. (equipment problems)

Best Internet List:

Sheraton Overland Park Hotel - UMA works great

Sheraton Stockholm - UMA works great


Perhaps compiling a list would be a good idea.

bdraco

Wirelessly posted (blackberry 8900: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_8; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.3 Safari/531.9)

The Westin across the street end up being the choice for me because of this.

cesco.g

+1! Strongly supported!

moulder3

I'll plan on updating the initial posting as needed...

(I've already updated with the hotels mentioned in recent postings)