Now that Marriott is starting to phase out porn in its new hotels, Hotel Check-In checked in with Omni Hotels to see what being porn-free has meant to the Dallas-based luxury hotel chain.
The hot topic of the moment is corporate responsibility to stop encouraging addiction and abuse in any form. Hotel boards have been discussing at length since an expose report on ABC’s 20/20 and MSNBC’s Porn Documentary to figure out what their associations were. The dirty little secret is no loner a secret and now they must all deal with it. A few week’s ago I wrote about making “No Porn a New Year’s Resolution.” It appears that this is definitely the year in which we address all those types of actions, whether it is “No Porn Sunday” or the removal pf porn movies from hotels.
Omni’s ownership, led by Texas billionaire Robert Rowling, in 1999 decided to eliminate all adult entertainment offerings from Omni’s in-room TV systems back in the days when adult entertainment was still a bigger money maker.
It was a moral decision, said Omni spokesperson Caryn Kboudi. It had nothing to do with changing in-room-entertainment platforms or declining movie-rental sales related to an uptick in the number of travelers who carry their own entertainment – the primary factors that drove Marriott’s decision.
Yet, within six months of Omni taking a porn-free position, the chain stumbled upon a new, lucrative business – religious meetings such as evangelist Billy Graham’s annual convention.
In a prepared statement, the hotel chain said as the company moves to a new entertainment system, “adult content will be off the menu for virtually all of our newly built hotels.”
The decision other key reason for the Marriott, like most hotel chains across the country, has been generating less revenue from video on-demand entertainment as more laptop-packing guests turn to the Internet for movies, games and video clips to keep them entertained.
Now, we must wait to see what hotel chain addresses this next.
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