I always carry my own internet USB stick for use in hotels. As Jerry says, the only thing worse than slow wi-fi is slow wi-fi that we have to pay for.

Don’t you also think the situation with internet in hotels is becoming similar to the situation with Inflight Entertainment? I’m not sure if it is worth it anymore for any airline to upgrade their Inflight Entertainment Systems. The reason is that so many of us now carry IPADs, smartphones, Kindles and pc’s that have more than enough capacity to carry all the films, books and other entertainment that we want.

What do others think?

thanks for the link to what 43% of us British girls carry in our handbags. When I looked at it, this one also came up….http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2097694/Kelly-Brook-models-New-Look-Valentines-day-lingerie-collection.html. sorry I’ve tried and tried, but just could not find a travel connection to this

Happy Valentines Day to all
from a British Girl in London

Excellent points. I’m amazed at the number of people who now expect to be able to stream video from their hotel room, and when I count the number of rooms in a property and multiply it by the number of simultaneous video streams that may be requested and calculate the bandwidth required, the answer is, to put it mildly, non-trivial.

I also don’t know about the relative merits of Wi-fi distribution compared to traditional cabled Ethernet distribution. On the face of it, there might seem to be higher upfront costs to feed Cat5e cabling through a building, but once that is done, the system is more upgrade-resilient.

I hesitate to say that we’re approaching the limits of the bandwidth that people would require. What else, beyond video, still remains? But, of course, there are plenty more things. Higher definition video, other gaming type products, and apps as yet not even thought of. Plus we’ll simply see more and more guests with more and more devices – the percentage of guests needing high bandwidth, and the number of hours/day they ‘need’ it, will continue to grow. So doubtless bandwidth demand will continue to rise.

Maybe a tiered model is appropriate? Free, moderate bandwidth, and limited to a certain number of MB of data per day, and beyond that, for the deluxe package, a higher rate.

Free is of course one extreme. But $25+/day for only moderate quality internet is the other extreme. Somewhere in the middle there should be a fair compromise for all. I’m not sure what that is.

Thank you for the survey you provided on hotel amenities. The Internet question has got to be one of the toughest issues for hoteliers these days.

With the introduction of IPad and similar type devices, the demand for bandwidth has exploded. This is not only true for hotels, but virtually every hotspot you might come across these days.

Applications that are used for videos, music, etc. require substantial bandwidth and the Internet infrastructure hotels installed over the past few years have become, generally, obsolete technology.

The cost of installing a hotel wide Wi-Fi network can be enormously expensive and a hoteliers are facing a conundrum, how to pay for technology that can become out of date nearly as fast as Apple releases new versions of it popular I-Pads and I-Phones.

The hotel industry may created a monster with free Wi-Fi, and now that the genie is out of the bottle, how to recover its capital costs for Internet distribution technology. I agree and like free Wi-Fi at a hotel; but, nothing annoys me more than slow Internet service. And the only thing worse is slow Wi-Fi that you have to pay for.

Perhaps you might want to survey your members with the idea of providing complimentary basic Internet service with limited bandwidth that provides for basic service for checking emails, etc. But the real question is: would people be willing to pay for the option of access to high speed connection with good bandwidth for downloading videos, music and other large downloaded files?

Best regards,
Jerry Jacobson

You obviously are a lawyer, because you are splitting hairs, and for little underlying purpose. Universal censorship doesn’t mean universal deletion. The mere fact that my review was refused indicates there is some sort of filtering process (call it a filter or a censoring mechanism, whatever you prefer) and indeed Tripadvisor itself boasts about its internal (let me think of another synonym) ‘quality control’ of its reviews. So – a ‘vast conspiracy’? Where did I say that. But, while I’d not have used the word conspiracy, Tripadvisor itself fully concedes that it restricts the reviews it allows on site.

I fully intend to publish the full text of my review, but as a timed release alongside their response indicating what is wrong with it. My point is not the ridiculous one you try and give to me of claiming a vast conspiracy. Instead, I’m pointing out that their filters are massively out of alignment, and their customer service sucks.

Lastly, people who say ‘I am a lawyer’ as justification for whatever nonsense they then spout really get my back up. It is a bit like other people who say ‘I am a doctor’ and then demand special consideration in some non-medical related field. Tell me you are an attorney who specializes in online publishing law, and then I’ll respect your opinion about Tripadvisor’s liability issues, but for all I know you’re a criminal defense attorney or perhaps one who specializes in wills and trusts. My own understanding – and I’m not a lawyer – is that there is a shield for companies such as Tripadvisor where they have held not to be the publisher of the information on their site, and in fact, if I remember correctly, if they start quality controlling the reviews, they then risk puncturing their shield and assume liability as a result.

If Tripadvisor has legal liabilities as you claim, perhaps you could point to some successful cases brought against them to date and also indicate the measure of damages they’ve had to pay out.

You also don’t say what jurisdiction your legal qualification applies to. Maybe you’re from Britain or somewhere where such laws are massively more draconian than in the US. Here it is normal that the aggrieved party has to prove the disputed commentary is false; whereas in Britain, the defending party has to prove it is true. This massively reduces the liability any and all publishers face in this country, and that is also probably why most of the action against Tripadvisor is occurring in Britain not the US.

Lastly, it seems you agree with me and my several times repeated advice that to get some value from Tripadvisor, it is necessary to evaluate not just the reviews but the reviewers.

Please think about what you say and the built in lack of logic :

1. Cuba can/does get any/all things it needs from Canada and just about any other country : In this case, what is the remaining purpose of the US being the only country in the world with a trade embargo? What purpose does it solve either us or them?

2. They kill and torture people : Are you suggesting that we should have no trade relationships with any country that kills and tortures people? Ummm, which countries in the world would that leave us to trade with? Where would we get all the raw materials – minerals, oil, etc from, if not from countries that torture/kill people? Why are we singling out only Cuba for special condemnation?

You also don’t answer my questions. How is anything we’ve done in the last 50 years improved society in Cuba? It hasn’t. Instead we’re in a pointless pissing competition with a tiny country, and as a result, they delight in thumbing their nose at us. In fact, it could be argued that prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, the enormous sponsorship from the USSR actually created a net benefit to Cuba in return for it continuing to make fun of us.

There’s no point or purpose in our Cuban embargo, and it is overwhelmingly hypocritical that we single Cuba out for special attention when there are many other countries in the world massively more deserving of our opprobrium.

Yes, there are thriving industries, particularly in third world countries, where people are paid small amounts of money (but significant sums from their perspective) to write reviews. I’ve seen advertisements for such positions in countries such as China and the Philippines.

Sincerely
Robert Ros