There are ways of registering a .dll to "extend" IE and do things like override the default home page and change the spinner graphic I don't remember any details from when I had a similar problem with my cable modem, but google and the =exact= names of the hotel software might help.

Recent Thinkpads have a reasonably cool program called "Access Connections" which is very useful for having different network configurations for multiple locations. There is a section for configuring IE buried in there.