So, after much trial and error I've found that it's the McAfee firewall that's stopping me from accessing the internet in hotels on my Win 8.1 laptop
I'm using the Livesafe package and it's all up to date.
Standard hotel type connection (I can see that it's using Cisco kit) - Connect to an unsecured SSID and then you should see a redirect to a login page when you try to access the web via a browser.
Works perfectly with the firewall turned off. but if the firewall is on I don't get to see the login page and if I turn the firewall off to login then turn it back on again later traffic over the connection is blocked.
I'm guessing there's a setting somewhere?