Hotel Wi-Fi, conference Wi-Fi, cafe Wi-Fi, and most public networks are designed for browsing and email, not voice calls. They're shared with everyone else in the building, often oversubscribed, and the gateway is rarely configured for real-time audio.

Rule of thumb: every wireless hop between you and the call increases the chance of poor audio. The fewer wireless hops in the path, the better. Wired ethernet beats Wi-Fi every time, and a quiet 4G/5G connection to the Cradle mobile app on your phone usually beats a busy hotel Wi-Fi network.

Quick checks (try these first)

Ask the hotel for wired ethernet. A lot of business hotels still offer a cable at the desk, even if the lobby pushes Wi-Fi. Plugging in removes the Wi-Fi hop entirely, which is the single biggest improvement you can make.
Make sure you've completed the captive portal sign-in fully. If you can browse a normal website (try cradle.io), you're past the portal. If you can't, finish the portal first.
Disconnect VPN. Hotel Wi-Fi plus VPN can compound the latency. Try without VPN first, and only turn the VPN back on if your IT policy requires it.

Why hotel and public Wi-Fi breaks Cradle

A few things go wrong specifically on these networks:

Captive portals. The pop-up sign-in page that asks for a room number or email. Until you complete it, your connection works for some things and not others. Cradle is often one of the things it doesn't work for, until you've signed in fully.
Asymmetric routing. Public Wi-Fi gateways sometimes route outgoing and incoming traffic on different paths. Voice calls don't like that; audio can come and go.
Port blocking. Some hotel networks block the traffic types real-time voice uses, to discourage anything other than browsing.
Aggressive Quality of Service. Hotels prioritise web traffic over real-time voice. Calls get deprioritised and chopped.
Oversubscription. A hotel network sized for "everyone reads email in the evening" struggles when half the floor is on video calls during the day.

Cradle can be working perfectly fine while a hotel network strangles it. None of the above is something Cradle controls.

What to try

In rough order of "most likely to help":

1. Finish the captive portal

If the network has a captive portal, complete it from a browser before opening Cradle. The portal might be a name + room number, an email + accept-terms, or a paid voucher.

If you've already accepted but you're not sure it stuck, the test is "can I open a normal web page now?" If yes, the portal is done. If no, open a fresh browser tab and try a different site, sometimes the redirect lands on a page that doesn't trigger the portal.

2. Sign out, reconnect, sign in to Cradle again

After completing the portal, restart your Wi-Fi connection so Cradle gets the route fresh.

Windows: click the network icon in the system tray, click the Wi-Fi name, click Disconnect, then click it again to Connect.
macOS: click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar, click Wi-Fi: Off, wait a few seconds, click Wi-Fi: On and reconnect.
Linux: use your panel's network indicator, or run nmcli connection down <name>; nmcli connection up <name> in a terminal.

Then reopen Cradle. If it was stuck on Offline, it should reconnect.

3. Switch the VPN off (if you can)

Hotel Wi-Fi plus VPN often produces one-way audio or call drops. Test a call without the VPN. If your IT policy lets you sign in to Cradle outside the VPN for calls, that's the simplest fix.

If you must keep the VPN on, see Cradle with a VPN for the deeper options.

4. Move to the Cradle mobile app on cellular

If wired ethernet isn't available and the hotel Wi-Fi is unusable, pick up the call on the Cradle mobile app on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off. Your phone is already on its own cellular connection, and one wireless hop (4G or 5G) is almost always better than two (your laptop's Wi-Fi to the hotel router, then the hotel router upstream to the internet).

This works better than tethering your laptop off your phone, because tethering adds a wireless hop (laptop to phone) on top of the cellular hop. Skip the laptop and use the phone directly.

If you must use the laptop, plug into wired ethernet (above). Wireless hops compound, and hotel Wi-Fi is the worst of them.

What to do for the call itself

If you're stuck on hotel Wi-Fi and the call is happening anyway:

Warn the person you're calling, "I'm on hotel Wi-Fi, the connection's not great, let me know if I cut out." Sets expectations.
Stick to audio, not video.
Keep other apps closed during the call.
If audio drops repeatedly, hang up and try again. A fresh connection sometimes lands on a better route.

Still stuck?

If you've tried everything above and Cradle still won't work on a network you need to use:

Note the network name, the symptoms, and what you've already tried.
Email help@cradle.io.
For an upcoming critical call, pick up the Cradle mobile app on cellular, or move to a wired connection. Public Wi-Fi configurations are out of Cradle's control.
Cradle support is open Monday to Friday, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm New Zealand time.

Cradle on hotel Wi-Fi