Villa Florence named as culprit in WiFi censoring incident
Update: HotelChatter is live at Hotel Marlowe another Kimpton property, and we just logged on to Metafilter without incident. Yesterdays problems appear to be an isolated incident at Villa Florence. Looks like the IT guy has a bit of explaining to do, but there is no WiFi censorship at Kimpton properties on the whole.
The Villa Florence, a Kimpton property in Union Square, has been outed as the hotel currently banning its users from visiting popular chat sites, including Metafilter.
If you read both of Matt's updates you will see that the hotel's IT guy "forgot" to lift the proxy for guests, and that they are currently working on doing so.
We think a plausible explanation is that IT mistakenly applied the proxy to both employee and hotel guests network mistakenly, not that the hotel didn't separate the two networks, but we will find out soon enough (we are scheduled to talk to a Kimpton GM here in Boston on a different matter and will most definitely bring this up).
Enough guessing. We will get to the bottom of this.
As you know, in the past we have lauded Kimpton for setting wireless free, while other hotel behemoths charge you, or double charge you for Internet access.
So while this incident does suck, we are not ready to call any Kimpton properties a bunch of censorship freaks just yet, (though it does sound like they don't want there employees surfing aimlessly).
Recently, we have visited about half a dozen Kimpton properties, and heard from other folks who have visited yet more Kimpton's, and this is the first encounter we have had with WiFi censoring (after heavy use of their networks we might add).
We really want Kimpton to get WiFi right, because they seem like one of the only larger chains trying to do it for free, but if free means we can't surf how we damn well please, we are out.
We are holding out hope this was the mistake of one IT guy. Is that really so far fetched? If you read update #2 that sounds like the case.
Related Stories:
· How to treat your customers like children [A Wholelotta Nothing]
· Censored WiFi at a hotel in San Francisco [boing boing]
· SF hotel censoring WiFi [HotelChatter]
· Kimpton Hotels: Doing Wireless Right
[HotelChatter]
· Hyatt Hotels: Doing Wireless Wrong
[HotelChatter]
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