I picked up this 'would have been very handy sign for hotels', or at least for their customers, from Virtual Economics (via David Black) just as I was sitting in a very posh hotel lounge fuming over the hotel's crap internet set-up.

Why is it that the internet set-up at fancy hotels tend to be as expensive as it is impractical, whereas less expensive hotels often have free wi-fi throughout? During my recent 10 days on the road, I would typically stay in a perfectly charming hotel where maybe the floors weren't quiet straight, and consequently the bath tub tilting slightly, but at least it would be clean, friendly and provide free wi-fi, in contrast to the posh hotels where I ended up using an amount similar to what I pay for my monthly broadband for two days of internet connection.

Not to mention how the internet-set up in the rooms was incompatible with the one for public areas (like in, impossible to read your newsfeeds over breakfast or lunch). It's the opposite of no-frills airlines: with these hotels the more you paid, the less you got – apart from straight floors, that is.

At least the posh hotels had gyms, my reason for choosing them in the first place, but I'd rather have free wi-fi and pay for a drop-in at a decent gym the hotel has an agreement with, than pay small fortunes for being online and get free access to gyms that resemble dumping grounds for equipment that was cool in the seventies. But I guess, with documentaries like this one from Panorama (via mediastandardstrusts' blog) hotels have a new excuse not to provide wi-fi in the rooms, and could even use the lack of it as a sales pitch: used to be 'smoke-free throughout' that heralded a truly modern hotel, now it's 'wi-fi free'... ?