I find that small hotels and B&Bs are quite happy to admit to free WiFi, but in large hotel chains, the information tends to fall into the holes between the "what you get in this particular hotel" page, and the "what you get as standard in all our hotels" page. But, yeah, given that the chain website whose website was particularly guilty of that turned out to have VERY patchy (and not free) Wifi, perhaps you're right.