Hyatt Is Getting Rid of On-Demand Porn in Hotel Rooms, Because Wi-Fi
Hyatt, the hotel company with 618 properties in 51 countries, is getting rid of on-demand TV porn in all guest rooms.
One suspects the move is not the result of any high-minded principles—as implied by reports of the chain "banning" it—but because of the dramatic decline in on-demand porn being paid for and watched on hotel room TVs.
Today, after all, ordering porn in a hotel room is as ridiculous as paying for a weather report—something that Playboy seems to have realized as it recently announced it's giving up publishing naked pics in print and doubling down on its articles. Obviously, it's all thanks to the Internet. Though we're never going to have particularly clear numbers on this, some estimates peg porn sites as comprising up to 12% of all websites. In 2013, Slate noted that the most popular porn site, Xvideos, netted 4.4 billion page views. Wikipedia had around 8 billion. If the Internet was a real place, Dave Chappelle proposed, there would be a guy in a beige trench coat around every corner asking you to check out celebrity nudes.
Hyatt isn't the first hotel chain to get rid of in-room, on-demand porn. Marriott and Hilton have retired from purveying porn directly through the TV as well. Marriott's explanation hinged on the moral issue—its chairperson Bill Marriott is a Mormon—but acknowledged the realpolitik behind the move, noting that people can use their computers "if they want that stuff."
This shift in hotel porn comes on the heels of the hotel chain "Wi-Fi wars." Hilton implemented free Wi-Fi the same month it ditched its porn collection. Hyatt has had free Wi-Fi for almost a year. But even before free Wi-Fi, on-demand hotel room porn has been declining: According to the AP, yearly porn revenue from a hotel room has gone down from $339 to $107 from 2000 to 2014. Looks like those nine months of free Wi-Fi put the final nail in the coffin.
Read next: 8 Ways to Avoid Overpaying for a Hotel Room