Finding hotels with good wifi
 

I need to stay a couple nights in Columbus Ohio, but the thing is I have an important all-day streaming presentation to give. Usually, hotel wifi is good nowadays, but I can't afford to have it be intermittent, and I need it to work all day even during busy times. I found hotelwifitest.com, but reviews are spotty for the entire city of Columbus...not confidence-inspiring.

Does anyone know a hotel chain that has exceptionally good internet, or can guarantee speed or bandwidth? Anyone actually stayed in Columbus and had a hotel with good internet?

Beyond hotels, I also looked at co-working spaces where I could rent an office for a day, but most of the co-working spaces only do memberships. None of them seem to offer a private office for a day.

I know the United lounge in the airport has some pretty decent "pods" where you could have semi-privacy, but the lounge is closed because of COVID. Places like Panera Bread are right out because of privacy, not to mention I can't be there 8 hours. What have others done when you need to work in another city for a day?

I have never had performance issues at a Marriott or Hilton hotel yet; I have stayed at Courtyard Columbus OSU and the Courtyard Downtown, and both were good and reliable (the first one was better if I recall correctly, and a newer hotel)
I otherwise use LTE hotspot on my phone, which works fine as well; if you have 5G you'll be in even better shape. I run a speedtest to be sure, but almost always get 30 or 40mbit which is more than adequate streaming (3 mbit should do it).

PS if you can plug in with a network wire somewhere even better. Wifi has some sub optimal things about it for streaming, though it usually works just fine.

I agree it's better to plug in a LAN cable. But I haven't seen many newer hotels that still have LAN cables. The ancient hotels I used to stay in Japan never had wifi but they always had LAN cables, but it seems the opposite nowadays. I guess I could call the hotel and ask them if they have LAN cables in their rooms.

Never had an issue with Hyatt hotels generally speaking. No specific experience with Columbus unfortunately.

IME, hotel wifis (in the rooms) are worst in the early to mid evening (especially for convention hotels) when everyone is connecting. During the normal business days problems / speed are much less of an issue.

Hotels are also more likely to have ethernet cable connections in meeting rooms but this requires prior arrangement with the hotel.

What about a trial membership at some of the national chains of co-working space/office by the hour? You might even be able to get a complimentary one.

I looked into this already. The problem is that 1) several of the Columbus co-working spaces are temporarily or permanently closed due to COVID and 2) usually their memberships do not include access to offices. They reserve private offices for the high-end plans ($500+/mo). And often that's only for a fixed office in one location, not office privileges nationwide. While you can rent meeting rooms by the hour, it's usually $20+/hr for a meeting room. Even at the co-working and flex-work places, there doesn't seem to be any product for somebody to short-term (1 day) rent a private office. With the memberships you can hang out in their business lounge or have a "flex desk", which is hardly more private or less noisy than a cafe; the fact that you can stay there all day seems to be the only advantage over Panera.

Hotels chains have nothing to do with how well internet works at individual hotels. No hotel group (Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, etc) micromanages their hotels (which are mostly franchises). Internet speed will be based on the provider and the infrastructure at each hotel.

You won't get a lot of eyes on this post. That fact means it's unlikely that you'll get a response to this question.

As someone who used to work in hotels, I think your best bet is to find a hotel that meets any other requirements (price, location) and call. Ask to speak to someone in the "onsite Reservations Office" or the Front Desk. A staff member in those areas should be able to give you the approximate speed of the guest internet. If they can't or don't offer to find the answer, move on to the next hotel.

Doing that will take time. Alternately, you can ask your Travel Department (if your company has one) to handle this for you. Or if you have access to a professional concierge service, ask them to help.

I have a job that allows me to work from anywhere and I've never had a problem with any hotel Internet and streaming.

What sucks about Hyatt's wifi is it disconnects every 24hr which plays havoc with anything you want to do 24hr+1min later. Marriott has this figured out and it's not hard.

I stayed at SpringHill Suites by the Wexler medical center. An older hotel in a mediocre location, but they had LAN cables in the room. Internet with the LAN cable was fine. The wifi worked also but I didn't use it.

Unless I am in a small-town hotel, I have never had wifi issues that I can remember. As far as Hilton (I'm not sure about other chains) my access gives me "premium internet". I assume it just gives me priority bandwidth.

With these high stakes, and my guess that you do this type of remote presentation more than once a lifetime, I strongly suggest a Mifi type device so that you have guaranteed internet service for this presentation.