Twenty two hours in the air, a stopover in Singapore, and by the time most international guests reach our front desk here at Brighton, all they want is a shower and a bed. There’s usually one more job first though. Someone has to text home to say the flight landed, check the driver actually got the pickup message, and more often than not, they realise their phone has no signal at all. We see it at check-in more than guests probably realise.
It’s a small annoyance in the scheme of a holiday. But it lands at exactly the wrong moment, when guests are tired and slightly disoriented and the first thing they need to do is solve a technical problem instead of just arriving.
Why phone signal matters more than people expect
At home, losing signal for an hour is nothing. You know the streets, the shops, roughly where you are without needing a map. None of that applies when you’ve just landed somewhere you’ve never been. Suddenly you need directions, currency conversions, a translated menu, and a way to let family know you’re safe, all within the first hour.
Without a working connection, guests end up relying on hotel WiFi the moment they walk through the door, and it’s usually the first thing they ask our team about at check-in. Problem is, hotel WiFi doesn’t help much while you’re still standing at the taxi rank trying to work out which car is yours, or scrolling through emails for a booking confirmation you can’t open without data.
Melbourne isn’t the easiest city to navigate on instinct either. The tram network, the one way streets around the bay, suburb names that blur into each other. All of it is far easier with a working map on your phone than by guesswork.
It matters just as much once guests start exploring beyond the hotel. Brighton Beach, the bayside foreshore path down toward St Kilda, the cafes tucked along Church Street, none of it comes with the kind of clear signage a CBD grid has, and a phone that already knows where it is turns wandering into exploring rather than getting lost.
The problem with figuring it out on arrival
A lot of travellers plan to sort their phone out once they land. Buy a SIM at the airport, use WiFi wherever they find it, that sort of thing. In practice, that plan falls apart fast. Airport SIM counters have queues, local shops keep odd hours, and roaming charges from a home carrier can turn a two minute phone call into a genuinely painful bill.
The travellers who avoid all of this tend to be the ones who sort out international phone plans before they even leave home, using an eSIM or a prepaid data plan they can switch on the second the plane touches down. Holafly is one of the more popular options for this among overseas visitors, mainly because it skips the need to hunt for a physical SIM card in a city you’ve never set foot in. No counter, no queue, no fumbling with a tiny SIM tray in an arrivals hall while everyone else pushes past toward the taxi rank.
It sounds like a minor piece of admin, and on paper it is. But it is the kind of minor task that either happens quietly before departure or turns into an actual problem on the day, usually at the worst possible time, like when a transfer driver is waiting outside and there is no way to let them know you have landed.
A Few Things Worth Sorting Before You Land
Check phone compatibility first. Most phones from the last few years support eSIM technology, but it takes thirty seconds in your settings to confirm before committing to a plan.
Set it up before you fly, not after. Installation typically happens over your home WiFi in a few minutes, so it’s already active and waiting the moment you land rather than something to figure out at the arrivals gate.
Save your transfer driver’s number and the hotel’s details offline. A screenshot works fine if you can’t get a signal the second you land.
Let your bank know you’re travelling. It’s a separate issue to phone connectivity, but it causes the same kind of arrival-day stress when a card gets declined at the taxi rank.
How this changes the actual guest experience
Guests who land already connected behave differently from the moment they arrive. No standing outside the terminal hunting for WiFi to confirm a transfer, no panicking about whether family knows the flight landed safely. They just get in the car and start the holiday.
That same connection matters again once they reach the room. After a long flight, most guests want a quiet evening, checking messages, calling home, watching something familiar before bed, without wondering what it’s going to cost them. A guest who isn’t thinking about data usage is a guest who actually relaxes, rather than one eyeing the clock and doing mental maths on roaming rates. It sounds like a small thing until you’ve actually done it on a bill that arrives two weeks later and makes no sense at all.
There’s also the simple matter of photos. Most travellers want to send a few pictures home on the day they arrive, the view from the room, maybe the first meal of the trip, and that only works smoothly with a decent connection rather than a patchy hotel signal shared across dozens of other rooms.
It matters even more for business and conference travellers
Conference guests carry a different kind of pressure. Confirming session times, dialling into calls with the head office, sending documents to colleagues on the other side of the world, often within the first hour of arriving. None of that works well if the only connection available is an overloaded conference WiFi network shared with three hundred other delegates, and it shows in small ways, someone stepping out mid session to find a signal, or apologising for a delayed reply that was really just a dead connection.
Sorting connectivity out in advance takes that pressure off entirely. It becomes one less thing to think about on a day that already has enough demands attached to it. We notice it in our own conference bookings too. The delegates who arrive already connected settle in fastest, while the ones still hunting for a signal are the ones asking our events team for the WiFi password before they’ve even found their seat.
What hotels can realistically offer
Free WiFi in the room is standard now, and it helps, but from where we sit, it only covers guests once they’re indoors. Everything before that, the airport, the transfer, the walk from the car to reception, still depends on the guest having their own connection sorted. That’s really the gap, and it’s why guests who’ve already set up something like a Holafly eSIM before departure barely notice it exists as a gap at all. Hotels can control the experience inside their walls, but what happens before arrival is largely up to the traveller, and the guests who plan ahead tend to notice the difference immediately.
Common Questions
Do I need an eSIM if my hotel has free WiFi?
Free WiFi covers you once you’re inside, but not during the airport, transfer, or the walk from the car to reception. Most of the stress guests describe happens in those gaps, not once they’re actually in the room.
Will an eSIM work as soon as I land in Melbourne?
Yes, provided it’s installed before you fly. You switch on data roaming the moment the plane lands, and it connects automatically without needing to find a shop or SIM counter.
Is a local SIM cheaper than an eSIM?
Sometimes, especially for longer stays, but it comes with the trade off of needing a shop, ID, and time you’d rather spend getting to the hotel. For a short stay, most travellers find the convenience worth the difference.
The takeaway
Nobody books a trip around their phone plan, and nobody should have to. But the guests who sort their connectivity out before they leave home tend to have an easier first hour, an easier first day, and a calmer stay overall. It’s not glamorous, and it’s rarely the thing anyone mentions in a review, but it’s one of those details that either disappears completely or becomes the only thing you can think about. We’d rather it disappeared, every time, for every guest who walks through our doors after a long flight. Better to sort it before you go, and let the rest of the trip actually feel like a holiday from the moment the wheels touch down.
