I spend a lot of my time away from home in Marriott Hotels around the world. One thing I can never understand is their Internet access policy. I was in Washington DC 2 nights ago staying at one of the upper end Marriott’s (around $300 a night) I turned on my iPod to see if I could get on the Internet to check my mail. To my surprise the Internet cost was I believe $14.95 for a 24 hour period. What I have failed to understand is why is it when staying at say a Courtyard Marriott or a Residence Inn Marriott that the Internet is free, and the room is like $80 to $90 a night. But when I stay at the high end Marriott’s (Like JW Marriott in Washington DC, or London Park Lane in London, England) that they always charge for Internet access. It was nice to see that the Washington Marriott did havt LG HDTV’s in the room with actual HD TV service, but it would have been nice if the wireless Internet was free as well.
Fast Hotel Internet Service
Most of the time when you go to a hotel the internet service pretty much sucks, and if it is free it sucks even more. However this weekend I was greatly surprised by the service in the Residence Inn by Marriott in Charleston WV. In the room they had a DSL modem on the table. So I plugged in the laptop an to my surprise this was what speedtest.net showed:
I think this is the first time I had a ~3Meg connection in a hotel room. I was able to download stuff at over 250KB/sec from my house while there as well. So kudos to the Residence Inn for the awesome Internet connection.