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Hotel WiFi Test predicts your performance in hotel bedrooms

Hotel WiFi Test, a site that lets you compare the speeds of WiFi in hotels, claims that it’s now got a better idea of how fast you’re going to be in the bedroom. 

The speed testing service, which relies on crowd testing to fuel its comparison engine, has developed a new algorithm which will more accurately predict what speeds people will get in hotels. 

Hotel WiFi says that its new system will take into account hotel features and aspects that can affect WiFi performance in order to provide more accurate weighings. 

Yes yes, the WiFi's very fast but how good is the room service?
Yes yes, the WiFi’s very fast but how good is the room service?

In a blog post, Hotel WiFi Test said: “People who travel a lot know that WiFi is faster in some cities and countries than in others, that certain hotel chains provide superior Internet services, and a number of other factors that affect WiFi speed. However, this subjective knowledge is only based on personal experience and is not precise in terms of assigning weights to those different components. 

“We have the largest and most comprehensive hotel WiFi test result database in the world, which is monumentally larger and more reliable than any personal experience could ever be.” 

Hotel WiFi Test hasn’t explained what factors its weighting system will take into account. We know that architecture and different building materials (among other things) can have an impact on WiFi performance as much as router and access point design – something which Farncombe and the University of Bristol explained during our visit to their testing centres

Hotel WiFi Test lets you search for hotels in over 100 cities, including London, New York, Amsterdam and Singapore, and check to see if the WiFi is as good as its cracked up to be. 

An aggregate ‘expected’ speed is listed above a range of speeds you can expect to enjoy. In the London section, the Ham Yard Hotel takes the top spot with an expected speed of 84.2Mbps, while Club Quarters Lincoln’s Inn Fields sits at the bottom of the first page with a 25.7Mbps expected speed. 

There’s also confidence rating for each hotel. Confidence refers to how thoroughly the WiFi has been tested at the hotel. As there’s such variance, based on how many people are using the connection and available bandwidth, most confidence ratings are low, but you can help out by testing WiFi speeds yourself – kind of like SamKnows for hotels. 

If you’re in a hotel you can perform a speed test and have your data added to the Hotel WiFi Speed Test database. You can also take the test by checking in with Foursquare. The data can then be tweeted to the hotel’s management in an attempt to shame them into improving if the speeds are lower than advertised. 

A partnership with Hotels.com pulls in pricing data (where available) and will also let you click through and book rooms if you’ve found the perfect hotel – or at least a hotel with the perfect wireless signal. 

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