
Ask HN: How do you make sure a B&B has wifi in the room? - johnnyg
My wife and I are going to do a "life style experiment". We want to work remote for a week.<p>Requirements seem simple:<p>* On the beach
* Nice porch to sit on
* Breakfast daily
* Wifi<p>AirBNB and VBRO won't make me breakfast. BedAndBreakfast.com won't tell me if the wifi is in the room.<p>How do you solve this issue without pounding through 50 B&#38;B websites? Is there a market niche here?
======
MehdiEG
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).

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

When did that become "reasonably priced"?

~~~
pliny
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.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> It's reasonable for work and unreasonable for entertainment.

If you limit yourself to what the Internet could do in the days of 56k modems,
3GB works just fine. However, I wouldn't exclusively call that
"entertainment".

It seems fairly unreasonable for heavyweight web applications as well, with
piles of JavaScript and various rich content that includes more than just text
and markup. It also won't nearly suffice for the purposes of pushing and
pulling code via version control, which I do regularly for work.

More to the point, it just seems unreasonable by the standards of non-cell
Internet connections, and unreasonable even by the standards of cell Internet
connections back when every provider offered "unlimited" plans.

> 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.

There exists some middle ground there. If you want to view pages with
heavyweight content, including the occasional video or large image, 3GB might
last a couple of weeks at most.

If you regularly do OS upgrades, download software packages, clone version
control repositories, perform backups, and otherwise use it like any other
computer professional would even _without_ including entertainment, 3GB might
last a few days. (This does not represent an off-the-cuff guess; I've measured
this.)

In any case, I intended my original comment simply to express astonishment
that we've gone from "how dare 'unlimited' not mean 'unlimited'" to "3GB/£15
(3GB/~$25) seems pretty reasonable" so quickly. Apparently that sentiment did
not go over well.

~~~
gte910h
I've done iOS app programming while riding in a car going 75 MPH through
backcountry GA using only the tethered connection on my iPhone to push code
updates.

Honestly, only the editing of binaries hurt at all. I didn't push as often,
but it was still fine when I did.

------
neilk
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...](http://www.airbnb.com/search?location=California&keywords=beach&hosting_amenities%5B%5D=4&hosting_amenities%5B%5D=16#)

------
fleitz
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
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!

------
Freestyler_3
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.

------
rhizome
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.

------
benologist
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
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..

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

------
citricsquid
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.

------
firebones
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?

------
Toph
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.

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

