3 ms·

I'm not really bothered by having wifi or not. When I'm travelling for leisure I use a smartphone to plan and look up information relevant to things I want to s

I'm not really bothered by having wifi or not. When I'm travelling for leisure I use a smartphone to plan and look up information relevant to things I want to see and do there, but maps can be trivially downloaded in advance with Osmand~ (on F-droid), and the rest can be done trivially on a modest phone plan. What sort of annoyed me on my last trip was how rental apartments and hotel rooms can have a lot of though put into them in terms of design, only to ruin it with a huge black rectangle mounted on the wall in a central location. I've had to unplug the TV's in two of these during this trip just to get rid of the bright standby LED!

oh_sigh 4y ago
When doing any kind of traveling, I carry a tiny roll of duct tape(I re-roll it onto a pencil). I have it for a million different possibilities, but probably 99% of the time I end up using it is to "turn off" all the standby LEDs in whatever room I'm in.
midasuni 4y ago
I routinely unplug the TV - I’ve been in hotels where the TV has turned on at 3am (maybe post power cut) blaring out some noise. Wifi is useful in situations like the hotel I was in last night - not a single bar of phone reception. The thing I do want and is often missing is a socket near the bed so I can charge my phone but still have it next to me when the alarm goes off in the morning and I listen to the radio before getting out of bed. 90%+ of my hotel nights are for business purposes though.
- AgentME 4y ago
  Wifi quality and socket placement are two things I find myself usually judging hotels on. Not that they're the most important qualities, but unlike most other qualities I care about, they're the main ones that some hotels completely overlook.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    This is almost always related to how old the building is. Newer builds will be wired up with more access points, and even Ethernet outlets in the room. Few old hotel buildings will tear down walls to run Ethernet wire all over, even if just to install more access points. And if it is an old cinder block/concrete building, assume the worst. Most of the big brand hotels in Hyatt/Hilton/Marriott/IHG had to get decent wifi installed though, using specific commercial products like Meraki and Ruckus and are subject to signal strength / bandwidth testing. The weakness is still the puny requirements around how much up and down bandwidth the hotel brands require. They are still okay with non fiber 100Mbps down / 5Mbps up coaxial cable connections, which renders the rest of the equipment moot. But that may be because many or most hotels lack a fiber option period from the ISP.
- koolba 4y ago
  > The thing I do want and is often missing is a socket near the bed so I can charge my phone but still have it next to me when the alarm goes off in the morning and I listen to the radio before getting out of bed. Get a 10 ft charger cable and you never worry about this again.
zamadatix 4y ago
It'd be great if hotels saved the money on the TV and used it on finding a fridge that doesn't sound like it has spent the last 10 years trying to cool the Sahara.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- teruakohatu 4y ago
  In my experience that have figured out a 'solution' to that problem: they turn up the fridge thermostat to hardly cool (slightly less noise, almost no cooling)

oh_sigh 4y ago

When doing any kind of traveling, I carry a tiny roll of duct tape(I re-roll it onto a pencil). I have it for a million different possibilities, but probably 99% of the time I end up using it is to "turn off" all the standby LEDs in whatever room I'm in.

midasuni 4y ago

I routinely unplug the TV - I’ve been in hotels where the TV has turned on at 3am (maybe post power cut) blaring out some noise. Wifi is useful in situations like the hotel I was in last night - not a single bar of phone reception. The thing I do want and is often missing is a socket near the bed so I can charge my phone but still have it next to me when the alarm goes off in the morning and I listen to the radio before getting out of bed. 90%+ of my hotel nights are for business purposes though.

AgentME 4y ago
Wifi quality and socket placement are two things I find myself usually judging hotels on. Not that they're the most important qualities, but unlike most other qualities I care about, they're the main ones that some hotels completely overlook.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  This is almost always related to how old the building is. Newer builds will be wired up with more access points, and even Ethernet outlets in the room. Few old hotel buildings will tear down walls to run Ethernet wire all over, even if just to install more access points. And if it is an old cinder block/concrete building, assume the worst. Most of the big brand hotels in Hyatt/Hilton/Marriott/IHG had to get decent wifi installed though, using specific commercial products like Meraki and Ruckus and are subject to signal strength / bandwidth testing. The weakness is still the puny requirements around how much up and down bandwidth the hotel brands require. They are still okay with non fiber 100Mbps down / 5Mbps up coaxial cable connections, which renders the rest of the equipment moot. But that may be because many or most hotels lack a fiber option period from the ISP.
koolba 4y ago
> The thing I do want and is often missing is a socket near the bed so I can charge my phone but still have it next to me when the alarm goes off in the morning and I listen to the radio before getting out of bed. Get a 10 ft charger cable and you never worry about this again.

zamadatix 4y ago

It'd be great if hotels saved the money on the TV and used it on finding a fridge that doesn't sound like it has spent the last 10 years trying to cool the Sahara.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
teruakohatu 4y ago
In my experience that have figured out a 'solution' to that problem: they turn up the fridge thermostat to hardly cool (slightly less noise, almost no cooling)