Scandinavian hotel chain Nordic Choice has the world’s best Wi-Fi, according to Hotel WiFi Test, a company that uses crowdsourcing to test the quality of Wi-Fi connections. Two characteristics of hotel Wi-Fi are considered: the quality of the WiFi and whether in-room Wi-Fi is free. The report contains a global ranking and separate rankings for the United States, Europe and Asia.
How do they judge Wi-Fi quality? “A hotel judged as having adequate Wi-Fi must provide an expected download speed of at least 3 Mbps (the Netflix recommendation for SD-quality streaming) and an upload speed of 500 kbps (the Skype recommendation for high-quality non-HD video calling),” the company said.
According to the company’s latest rankings, 85 percent of Nordic Choice hotels offer adequate Wi-Fi and 100 percent of its hotels offer free Wi-Fi.
The top 10 hotel chains ranked by Wi-Fi quality were:
1. Nordic Choice
2. Radisson Blu
3. Renaissance
4. Mercure
5. Ibis and Ibis Styles
6. Scandic Hotels
7. InterContinental
8. Econo Lodge
9. Four Points
10. Marriott Hotels & Resorts
Wi-Fi quality is expressed by the percentage of hotels that offer adequate Wi-Fi quality in a given geographical area. This type of ranking is easy to understand, and it makes perfect sense from a practical standpoint, Hotel WiFi Test said in a statement to Travel Skills. For most travelers, having super-fast and consistently stable Wi-Fi is a great bonus, but their first priority is ensuring that basic quality expectations for Internet access are met.
Hotel WiFi Test ranked the 10 worse hotel chains as:
41. Hyatt Place
42. Fairfield Inn & Suites
43. Hilton Garden Inn
44. Candlewood Hotel
45. Motel 6
46. NH Hotels
47. Embassy Suites
48. Extended Stay America
49. Homewood Suites
50. Hampton Inn