When you're traveling, hotel Wi-Fi might be your only source of connectivity, so when you wind up in a hotel and the internet crawwwwwls, it can be a major bummer.
Thanks to sites like SpeedSpot or Hotel Wi-Fi Test, you can avoid unfortunate internet conditions. If you're traveling to a city, simply search for each of the hotels you're searching for, and the test will give you the speed you can expect, as well as other details, like whether or not you have to pay for it. You can also just browse local hotels based on the speeds they offer. From there you can book a room through Hotels.com. They've gotta make money somehow, right?
Staying in a hotel? Head run a quick speed test. The website will use your internet location to check your approximate location—you'll have to grant it permission in your browser, first—and then you select your hotel from a list of suggestions. It'll check your speed and figure the results into the rating.
The system could of course be spoofed, and given the relatively small number of tests that have been run so far, the speed numbers probably aren't totally reliable yet. But if the service builds up into a popular one, fake and fluke speed measurements will be diluted out of the mix.
So use it! You research the continental breakfast offerings on Yelp before you book, you might as well check to see if the internet sucks, too. [SpeedSpot and Hotel Wi-Fi Test via Mashable]
This post has been updated to add another service, SpeedSpot, which is reportedly older and appears to have more complete resources and development.