Safari cannot connect to hotel Wi-Fi

At a hotel, I set up my MacBook Pro running El Capitan 10.11.6, connect to the hotel's Wi-Fi network, launch Safari 11.0.3, type a random string ("vvv") into Safari's address field, then hit Return.

Safari responds with an error message:

"Safari can't open the page "https://vvvvw.google.com/search? client=safari&rls=en&q=vvv&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8" because Safari can't establish a secure connection to the server "www.google.com".

Then I launch Firefox 58.0.2, type "vvv" and Return.

Firefox responds with a small message bar across the top of the window's rendering area saying something to the effect that "You must be logged in..." and a button saying "Log In". I click on the button and the hotel's log-in window appears. After I complete the log-in procedure, Firefox, Safari and Mail all work fine.

So, Firefox works, Safari doesn't. I have repeated this scenario every morning at this hotel. I have also performed this scenario at other hotels.

In future, instead of switching to Firefox, how might I coax Safari into showing me the hotel's log-in window?

--Gil