Hotel WiFi Test Ranks Cities, Countries, And World Regions

NEW YORK, NY Hotel WiFi Test has released a new report that ranks cities, countries, and world regions by WiFi quality. Two characteristics of hotel WiFi are considered: the quality of the WiFi and whether in-room WiFi is free.

WiFi Quality is expressed by the percentage of hotels that offer adequate WiFi quality in a given geographical area. This type of ranking is easy to understand, and it makes perfect sense from a practical standpoint. For most travelers, having super-fast and consistently stable WiFi is a great bonus, but their first priority is ensuring that basic quality expectations for Internet access are met.

In this report, a hotel judged as having adequate WiFi 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 Free WiFi percentage is calculated as a ratio of hotels that offer free in-room WiFi to all hotels for which the WiFi price structure and availability is known. In our view, hotel WiFi is a synonym for in-room WiFi; therefore, hotels that offer free WiFi only in public areas are not counted as hotels with free WiFi.
Key takeaways:

• In Europe, it is 33% more likely that a hotel has adequate WiFi than in the United States; but in the United States, it is 14% more likely that a hotel will offer free in-room WiFi.

• Asia is at the top when it comes to hotel WiFi quality (49.5%), but at the bottom for the percentage of hotels offering free in-room WiFi (61.2%).

• The United States is only in the 21st percentile for WiFi quality; 79% of countries have better hotel WiFi.

• South Korea is the leader in hotel WiFi quality (92%) by a healthy margin in 7.1 percentage points to the second best country (Japan).

• The United States: Portland is in solid first place with a 10 percentage point gap over the second-place city (Seattle) in terms of WiFi quality. It also has one the highest percentages of hotels offering free in-room WiFi (86.7%).

• The United States: The chances of getting a hotel with adequate WiFi are almost three times higher in Portland than in Atlanta.

World Cities:

City - WiFi Qality - Free WiFi

1 Stockholm, Sweden 88.9% 89.5%
2 Budapest, Hungary 84.4% 75.8%
3 Tokyo, Japan 81.9% 51.2%
4 Dublin, Ireland 77.5% 72.3%
5 Montreal, Canada 69.0% 85.8%
6 Portland, United States 66.7% 86.7%
7 Moscow, Russia 63.6% 86.8%
8 Amsterdam, Netherlands 61.9% 84.9%
9 Toronto, Canada 61.5% 76.0%
10 Kowloon, Hong Kong 61.3% 64.4%
11 Vienna, Austria 61.2% 83.1%
12 Singapore, Singapore 58.8% 72.8%
13 Brussels, Belgium 57.1% 72.6%
14 Berlin, Germany 56.9% 75%
15 Munich, Germany 56.7% 64.1%
16 Bengaluru, India 56.7% 61.3%
17 Seattle, United States 56.7% 64.6%
18 Rome, Italy 55.9% 79.8%
19 Barcelona, Spain 53.2% 87.9%
20 Cologne, Germany 52.9% 62.0%
21 London, United Kingdom 52.8% 67.2%
22 Bangkok, Thailand 52.5% 73.1%
23 Frankfurt, Germany 51.7% 68.6%
24 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 48.5% 75.9%
25 Chicago, United States 47.5% 67.4%
26 Dubai, United Arab Emirates 46.8% 40.9%
27 Los Angeles, United States 46.3% 69.3%
28 Orlando, United States 45.9% 75.6%
29 Las Vegas, United States 45.5% 59.1%
30 Madrid, Spain 44.8% 82.8%
31 Hamburg, Germany 44.6% 69.9%
32 New York, United States 44.5% 65.4%
33 Dallas, United States 43.9% 74.8%
34 Washington, United States 43.1% 58.0%
35 Istanbul, Turkey 42.9% 91.5%
36 San Francisco, United States 42.7% 72.2%
37 San Diego, United States 42.4% 71.1%
38 Milan, Italy 41.9% 71.3%
39 Boston, United States 41.0% 56.6%
40 Austin, United States 40% 87.9%
41 Sao Paulo, Brazil 40% 69.4%
42 Houston, United States 37.7% 84.9%
43 Prague, Czech Republic 37.3% 83.6%
44 Denver, United States 37.1% 81.8%
45 Pattaya, Thailand 35.5% 71.1%
46 Paris, France 30.8% 86.4%
47 Jakarta, Indonesia 30% 63.2%
48 San Antonio, United States 25.6% 85.2%
49 Atlanta, United States 22.5% 68.4%
50 Albufeira, Portugal 8.8% 37.6%