Ask HN: How do you make sure a B&B has wifi in the room?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123864

by johnnyg • 14 years ago

20 20 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My wife and I are going to do a "life style experiment". We want to work remote for a week.

Requirements seem simple:

* On the beach * Nice porch to sit on * Breakfast daily * Wifi

AirBNB and VBRO won't make me breakfast. BedAndBreakfast.com won't tell me if the wifi is in the room.

How do you solve this issue without pounding through 50 B&B websites? Is there a market niche here?

benologist2• 14 years ago

I've been thinking about this for a while since I travel so much, I think there is a market although I don't know how profitable it'd be.

A site full of hotel wifi ratings, speeds and passwords would be so awesome. Kind of like bugmenot or maybe hipmunk with an agony rating for hotels.

petercooper• 14 years ago

It'd be awesome if TripAdvisor added this (if anyone from there is reading ;-)). Not that I have great love for TripAdvisor but they seem to have the most reviews, listings, and an existing user base they could get to provide the info..

benologist2• 14 years ago

Yeah it really seems like something that would be a killer feature of a larger system.

encoderer• 14 years ago

I think they may have had a small pivot recently, but Room77.com was building software that let you do things like see what the view will be from a given hotel room and get info on things like street noise. This would be up their alley as well.

It would involve manual data collection but it could be a very useful service. Configure a handheld of some kind that can sit in a (vacant) room for a few hours--maybe a day--and measure ambient noise, wifi signal strength, even the amount of sunlight.

rhizome• 14 years ago

I live in San Francisco. When I was last shopping for a car, the car's dimensions were one of the primary criteria I used to decide. No auto website supplies this information, much less let you query upon it, so I was reduced to pad-and-paper and Wikipedia. I have thought over the years that there "should be" a site that centralizes all of this arcana, but whether there's a market niche here I haven't found it. Heck, even Newegg et al, retail sites that use search facets (sidebar filters) have poor content and/or underimplemented details.

So, it's probably worth more to complain to BedAndBreakfast.com to be doing this since they likely already pay someone to pursue details like the one's they already do have. They probably just don't think it's very important and nobody is telling them otherwise.

neilk• 14 years ago

AirBnb allows you to constrain a search to properties that have Internet, Wireless Internet, and Breakfast.

Do a search, then look on the right side of the page for the "Amenities" widget (you have to scroll all the way down). You could also add "beach" and/or "ocean" as a keyword in the widget right under that.

Voila.

http://www.airbnb.com/search?location=California&keyword...

Freestyler_3• 14 years ago

Give them a call?

Better than searching through sites when a lot of the time they don't have that info on it.

It should be listed though... it should.

MehdiEG2• 14 years ago

Running a couple of online businesses that require us to have online access wherever we are (it's always when you decide to go away for a week that the site goes down or an army of spammers targets your member), this is a problem we constantly run into whenever we go away, be in on holidays or for business.

There's nothing like that yet as far as I know. Most hotels and B&B will indicate whether they've got wifi access. Typically, if wifi isn't mentioned, it means no wifi.

But knowing that wifi is available isn't actually all that helpful. You'll often find that wifi is available but costs more than the room itself. Or, even more often, it just doesn't work or is unusably slow.

So we always try to get a place with wifi but also always carry an unlocked MiFi with us. In the UK, you can get one for £50 on PAYG on Three and unlock it for a few quids. PAYG data topups in the UK on Three are reasonably priced (£15 for 3GB of data). When we go abroad, we first check this wiki to find local operators with decent PAYG data plans and we buy a local SIM card as soon as we land: http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/Prepaid_SIM_with_data

It's a hassle but if you really need internet access, that's the only option at the moment I'm afraid. There is definitely a niche for a way to identify hotels and B&B with free / reasonably priced and reliable wifi connection (and also cafés while we're at it - it's an incredible pain to find café with working wifi).

JoshTriplett2• 14 years ago

> PAYG data topups in the UK on Three are reasonably priced (£15 for 3GB of data).

When did that become "reasonably priced"?

MehdiEG2• 14 years ago

I find it reasonably priced to be honest given how handy this is what I use it for. 3GB goes a long way actually. What would you find reasonable?

pliny• 14 years ago

It's reasonable for work and unreasonable for entertainment. If you just need to send emails and be able to restart your server then 3GB will basically last forever, not so if you want to torrent 1080p copies of Game of Thrones.

sehugg• 14 years ago

I concur with the above post -- we travel with a Cradlepoint router and Millenicom USB modem. You can securely bridge to wired ethernet if available (some routers bridge to wifi) and if anything looks fishy or flaky you can seamlessly switch to the modem.

I've often thought it would be a cool idea if these websites had a tool which automatically assessed a property's wifi quality via a quiz and/or a series of tests. But if you have the modem, a landline becomes a luxury not a requirement.

citricsquid• 14 years ago

Seems like something you could use a site like exec or taskrabbit for. Have a "personal assistant" call around some diffetent B&Bs (or even have them find B&Bs for you) and get info on their wifi.

Toph• 14 years ago

Doesn't solve your exact problem but we own a couple hotspot devices. We don't always have a need for them but use them at least a couple times a month on the go around town so they are more than worth it. When you add in trips whether for vacation, business, or anything else, boy do they come in handle. Take a look.

fleitz• 14 years ago

I would recommend two tools, one is called email and the other is called the phone. Depending on whether the place has an email address or a phone select the appropriate tool, contact the proprietor and inquire as to whether his establishment will be suitable for your purposes.

Given that your using tools used to sellbed and breakfasts on the internet chances are high that the proprietor has both breakfast AND wifi.

Lucadg• 14 years ago

I have been working online for many years now and I share your pain :)

I don't think relying on the information the Owners give can be a solution. They want to sell and they'll consider their shared wifi connection always "fast", whatever that means.

We have developed a niche platform for vacation rentals which would allow you to build a website dedicated just to vacation rentals with internet connection. (some call it an Airbnb builder, but this is not accurate for many reasons. One of them is that we don't do peer to peer).

Anyone wanting to open a small business to fill this niche could use our CMS to build the site and select the accommodations from the thousands we have. We have local Managers who visited personally most of these Owners and Accommodations, so they can provide you with hard data such as Actual Internet Speed. SpeedTest.net results for instance.

This is different from letting the Owners check that "wi-fi" checkbox.

I had the "only fast internet accommodations" idea long time ago, but we're waiting for the right person/team to come in and do it.

The system is http://www.adormo.com and these are some other niches we built already just to give you an idea: http://www.topfamilyhomes.com http://www.kitesurfsleep.com http://www.petfriendlystays.com

If anybody is passionate to solve this problem with us, please send us an email!

israelyc• 14 years ago

Get a MiFi or make sure your phone can serve as a hotspot.

firebones• 14 years ago

This is going to sound harsh or relationship-y, but my idea of B&B with the wife doesn't involve WiFi as a requirement.

I know you're trying to make a point about working remotely, but see if you can go (somewhat) analog and single-threaded for the work day, then find an offsite location to sync and get connected for a brief period later in the day.

If not for the whole vacation, at least for a few days. It might surprise you how disconnected you really need to be. Can you condense your connectedness to an hour at a mid-afternoon coffee shop visit?

Ask HN: How do you make sure a B&B has wifi in the room?

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