Thursday, March 02, 2006

Welcome to 1999

I am taking a break from client engagements this week and investing in some education: I am learning about IBM's WebSphere Business Modeler (sic) product.

I must admit to having been somewhat cynical at the start of the week. I approached this class from the perspective of a middleware consultant rather than as a business analyst and that was my mistake. This was a course that showed how we could use the tool to help clients understand the problems in their business and understand how to solve them. The simulation and analytic capabilities in Modeler are astonishing.

However, that is not the purpose of this post. Rather, the purpose of this post was to point out that I have been staying in the "Holiday Inn Eastleigh" for a couple of days - since commuting to and from IBM Hursley from London every day for a week was too much. The hotel is nice - indeed, I've just had a most agreeable meal with two good friends - but... wait for it..... there is no wireless or broadband internet access anywhere in the hotel.

No. That was not a typing mistake; I'll repeat it in case you missed it. In 2006, the owners of Holiday Inn somehow believe it is acceptable to sell hotel rooms where the only access to the internet is via an analogue telephone (at 28 kbps!!!).

I will, of course, never stay here again until they get their act together but it did teach me a valuable lesson: one should not assume that such facilities will be available when booking a hotel.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Rich,

Yes I have unfortunately found this out to my dismay. Holiday Inn seems to be behind its competitors in providing this type of service. I have now stayed in 3 Holiday Inns and all 3 do not broadband or wireless access however Travel Inn (shudder!!!!) do, which I thought was strange. Surely this must put Holiday inn at a disadvantage?

Richard Brown said...

Interesting.... it's not just the Eastleigh one. How odd.