I’ve been staying in the Hilton Brussels City for the last couple of nights.
In terms of location the hotel is pretty convenient if you’re in Brussels for meetings. The rooms are nice and the staff are friendly.
However the internet setup is far from satisfactory.
The Hilton group of hotels charges over €20 / day for internet access in its European hotels. While I don’t particularly like paying that much for a connection I will pay it, as I need to work from my hotel room while travelling.
However – and this is the thing that has annoyed me – falsely advertising what they are offering and what you are paying for is really not the way to win their clients’ loyalty.
In the Hilton Brussels City you can choose between either an economy or a business internet connection.
The “economy” connection comes with a number of limits, so I signed up for the “business” option.
This is how it is advertised on the signup page:
Note the very clear reference to unlimited data transfer.
Now have a look at the connection status window, which you can only see once you’ve actually signed up and paid:
They impose a hard cap on the uploads!
So if you use Skype to save on your phone bills when travelling etc., you are well and truly snookered. Once you hit the upload cap they cut you off and you have to pay again if you want to reconnect. The upload cap seems to be around 250 MB, which if you use Skype and need to send a few emails with attachments etc., runs out quite easily – as I found out!
It’s 2010 for God’s sake! Why on earth are they doing this and why aren’t they telling people before they signup about the limitations?
At €27 for 24 hours you would think that they’d be able to give you unlimited bandwidth in both directions.
Not impressed!
**** me that is steep in this day and age I’d really assume hotels would be offering internet as a free extra. I mean I can grab a bus from Dublin Airport to Galway for 1 euro at times which includes Free WiFi .. a Hotel room at the Hilton is considerably more so they really need to get with the program but then I guess people just pay it so hmm…
James
Yes it is not cheap, but that isn’t what annoyed me.
Selling me an unlimited data package and then limiting me annoyed me
Michele
3G roaming with a dongle might be a better bet especially as some of them (T-Mobile UK for instance) include hotspot access at places like airports. Not sure what European data roaming rates are like though.
At least there is a money back guarantee, I hope you used it. clowns!
Keith
I queried my bill on checkout and after a few minutes talking to one guy the manager came out and gave me a discount ..
Better than nothing, but I’m still not impressed ..
Gordon – I know we were looking at getting a couple of them as I travel quite a bit. I really should just get one and be done with it
The better hotel, the worse Internet access and pricey. Internet should be for free and in the most *** hotels it is usually for free. The best hotels usually.. aren’t that good.
Daniel – The Intercontinental in Prague wins the prize for most expensive yet!
Michele