Nutter Friendly Hotels

Nordic Choice Hotels have been pedalling ludicrous propaganda equating porn with child sex trafficking.

The HR & Manager for the company spewed that 1.2 million children are trafficked annually and many of them are sold into the porn industry. To show their commitment to this nonsense, the hotel chain has now banned adult entertainment from the in-room offerings at its 168-properties around the Nordic region.

Nordic Choice Hotels CEO, Torgeir Silseth spouted:

We believe it is a natural part of our social responsibility to not support an industry that contributes to trafficking or other forms of trafficking.

So if you must stay at Comfort Inns, 'Quality' Inns or Clarion hotels, you had better take your own entertainment.

LodgeNet, a major distributor of adult entertainment through its hotel cable TV network, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection..

US nutter campaigners will be well pleased, they have been campaigning against hotel room porn for quite a while. Unfortunately for them it probably just means that people are downloading or bringing their own porn.

LodgeNet said that fewer hotels used its services --- 1.5 million currently, down from two million in 2009 --- and guests ordered fewer pay-per-view movies. For years LodgeNet has been under threats posed by laptops, streaming Internet TV and portable devices. But prior to the boom of portable electronics, the hotel room was a virtual monopoly for cable TV suppliers. One of its most lucrative areas is porn. Analysts back in 2011 speculated that about half of the company's revenue came from adult entertainment.

Marriott International has announced plans to phase out pay-per-view adult movies from its hotel rooms. According to USA Today, the company said:

Changing technology and how guests access entertainment has reduced the revenue hotels and their owners derive from in-room movies, including adult content.

Joe McInerney, CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, added:

It is a hotel's prerogative, as well as a business decision, regarding what services it provides to its guests, including those striving to enhance their family-friendly image.

Porn will be phased out first in new hotels as old video systems are replaced with on-demand services.

Offsite: Shrewd

20th March 2012. See  article from  business.avn.com

AVN commentators suggested that maybe there is some shrewd business thinking going on.

Bill Marriott told an interviewer from the Associated Press:

I've always been concerned about [pornographic] movies in rooms. In the next three or four years, we won't have any more of those. That's something we've had a real problem with because the Church is very, very opposed to pornography, as it should be, and we are for families. But the owners of our hotels were making a lot of money. In fact, the only movies that make any money are pornography.

The Church, of course, is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons. And according to one hotel insider, porn accounts for 80 to 90 percent of all in-room movie purchases?

Now Marriott can keep the religious nutters happy by turning off their in-house porn systems. But the replacement entertainment will provide internet access and a high definition TV for a suitable fee...

...Which will of course be used to watch porn.

Following news reports that an unnamed hotel chain customer of in-room television provider LodgeNet was planning to phase out in-room porn, Marriott said that it was the chain in question.

But the company announcement also strongly implied, though it did not actually state, that existing rooms will continue to serve up adult fare while new rooms being built over the next several years will not.

Indeed, the announcement made to USA Today actually augurs more access to adult content in Marriott rooms in the future rather than less. Considering the company's stated commitment to upgrading in-room technologies that will supersede the traditional way in which video and other in-room entertainment has been made available to its customers, guests can look forward to unlimited access to desired content of all types.

The company said in response to a query by USA Today:

It is our practice to keep adult content out of the reach of children and unavailable to any adult who chooses not to view it. We have strong controls in place that allow guests to block these materials. Changing technology and how guests access entertainment has reduced the revenue hotels and their owners derive from in-room movies, including adult content. We are working with in-room entertainment providers and technology vendors to transition to the next generation of in-room entertainment. This new platform of Internet-based video-on-demand will facilitate our exit from the traditional hotel video systems that included adult content in the menu selection, and will also provide guests greater choice and control over what they watch across our system.

In a confusing statement perhaps referring to to existing hotel movie service, Marriott added:

As we transition to this new platform, adult content will be off the menu for virtually all of our newly built hotels. Over the next few years, this will be the policy across our system.

Free Wi-Fi and widespread availability of Web-based adult-entertainment viewing may be contributing to pressure on LodgeNet, which provides various electronic guest-services to 1.9 million hotel rooms.

LodgeNet gets more than half of its revenue from providing hotels with guest services, including movies and entertainment viewing, Interactive TV, high-speed Internet access, and other connectivity solutions.

The decline in per room revenue continued to be driven by conservative consumer buying patterns as well as less popular theatrical content during the quarter as compared to the year-earlier period, LodgeNet stated.

Adult-entertainment viewing undoubtedly is a big-ticket item for LodgeNet and other vendors in their in-room, on-demand offerings, and the widespread availability of porn on guests' laptops these days may be contributing to the less popular theatrical content which LodgeNet referred to.

Overall, LodgeNet has been hurt by the slump in business travel and materially lower purchases by consumers.

A county in Minnesota is taking a stance about pornography. In most situations, Winona County will no longer reimburse workers for staying at hotels that offer pay-per view pornography.

Winona County is now the first in the USA to pass a clean hotel policy. The decision makes employees stay in porn-free hotels if they want reimbursement.

Chuck Derry with the Gender Violence Institute claims: Contemporary pornography 90% of it is degrading and violent towards women and girls. For the board members, it was an ethical decision. Derry says, The public is not going to pay for employees that stay in establishments that support this kind of material.

Policy initiators hope this action will cause a ripple effect throughout the US.

A Minnesota lawmaker wants state employees to stay out of hotels with violent porn while traveling for work.

A bill sponsored by Democratic Senator Tarryl Clark of St. Cloud could prohibit spending public dollars at in-state hotels or meeting facilities that provide their customers with pornographic materials that link sex with violence. Non-violent adult movies would be OK.

The bill gets a hearing in a Senate committee on Wednesday.

The Department of Administration would keep a directory of approved facilities to help employees plan travel.

Update: Unanimous

11th March 2010. Based on article from politicsinminnesota.com

A bill that would prohibit state employees and elected officials from spending public dollars at hotels that offer customers access to violent pornographic movies has passed unanimously out of a Senate committee.

The measure, introduced by Sen. Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, cleared the Senate's State and Local Government Operation and Oversight Committee and will proceed directly to the floor.

The legislation allows for state employees to ignore the prohibition if there's no porn-free facility available. But they're required to provide a written explanation as to why they opted to stay in a hotel providing access to pornographic materials. The legislation defines that term as a sexually explicit image or performance that objectifies or exploits its subjects by eroticizing domination, degradation, or violence.

Only one person testified against the bill. Francis Jenkins White told legislators that sexual role play involving blindfolds or handcuffs is perfectly natural and should not be regulated in any way by the state. The bill is a classic case of trying to regulate someone's thoughts and desires, he said.

The only senator who expressed some misgivings about the legislation was Claire Robling, GOP-Jordan. She noted that pornography is all over the Internet and that the legislation would do little to limit access to such materials. Someone coming in with a computer could still be viewing it, Robling said.

Update: Voted Down in House Committee

18th March 2010.  From business.avn.com

A Minnesota House committee has voted down a bill that would have prevented state employees from using state funds at hotels or meeting facilities in the state that provide pay-per-view violent porn for guests.

The bill, HF 3287, which was introduced on March 1 by Larry Haws was taken up by the State and Local Government Operations Reform, Technology and Elections Committee, but didn't make it out.

The Senate version, SF 2861, was introduced in late February by Tarryl Clark, and passed the State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee last week.

Language from the House version included:

Constitutional officers, members of the legislature, an agency and its employees must ask if a facility is a preferred site and must use a preferred site when selecting lodging or facilities for state employees traveling on state business and when selecting facilities for conferences, meetings, education or training sessions, and similar events in Minnesota sponsored by state agencies unless:

Preferred site means lodging that can demonstrate, upon request, that it has adopted clean hotel policies and procedures;

Clean hotel policies and procedures means reasonable policies and procedures that eliminate within the facility the availability of sexually explicit work with depictions of sexual conduct that objectifies and exploits its subjects by eroticizing domination, degradation, or violence.

The Senate version awaits a final vote.

A movement to make porn films condom-only is sure to gain further traction as two groups plan to protest the Marriott hotel chain.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Pink Cross Foundation claim Marriott acts as a middleman in selling condom-less porn productions because it makes millions from the pay-per-view lineup it offers in its hotel rooms.

The groups are planning a Porn In at the downtown Los Angeles Marriott. They also will announce a viral and print ad campaign for a hotel boycott.

They will protest in front of the Figueroa Street Marriott with banners and three-foot wide condoms. Later, a press conference will be held in a hotel room with streaming porn on the room's flat screen.

Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said that until he gets a commitment from Marriott officials to block condomless adult films to their hotel guests he will urge a public boycott of the entire Marriott chain, which pencils out to about 3,000.

We want to highlight the brazen hypocrisy — the Mormon Marriott's moral masquerade — of such a so-called family oriented hotel chain profiteering off adult films that endanger the lives of the performers acting in them, Weinstein said.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has taken a stand after an adult performer tested positive for HIV several months ago.

The Arlington Group, a coalition of Christian nutter organizations that includes Focus on the Family, met with Marriott International officials in April to try and persuade the hotel chain to stop offering pay-per-view adult movies in its rooms.

Marriott offers the programming in most of its 3,000 U.S. hotels, and the Arlington Group representatives urged the chain to adopt an "opt-in" television system, in which guests would have to contact the front desk to receive adult entertainment. Currently, the programming is available in hotel rooms until guests opt out.

At the meeting, the group presented Marriott officials with 102,000 signatures from people wanting the chain to stop offering adult entertainment. Of those signatures, 9,000 were from Marriott Rewards Card members.

Marriott responded in a letter dated June 26 to Donald Wildman, president of the nutter action group American Family Association, which is part of the coalition.

The letter said the company was in conversation with its adult-entertainment provider, Lodgenet, about the opt-in procedure, said Roger Conner, vice president of communications for Marriott International. Marriott took no other action but promised it would raise the issue at its owners meeting in late July, Conner said.

In a terse letter to Marriott dated July 14, Wildman imposed a deadline of Aug. 15 to hear a definite response on concrete actions taken toward the removal of pornography from your properties.

Marriott International is coming under heavy fire from nutter activists urging the hotel giant to banish  sexual fare from its bedroom TV.

Focus on the Family met with hotel executives in Washington DC, and provided Marriott with a petition signed by 102,000 nutters who want pornographic films purged from the list of movie offerings.

Daniel Weiss, media and sexuality analyst for the group, said Marriott has billed itself as a family-lodging establishment, and its decision to provide adult films to its customers is contrary to its reputation.

Weiss said hotels and motels have been major contributors to the proliferation of pornography in mainstream culture: We've heard from people who have developed addictions, businessmen, people who travel a lot, who found that away from their support structure and families they were very vulnerable to this type of material. They indicated that hotel porn was very significant in their addiction.

When WND asked Marriott Vice President of Communications Roger Conner why the hotel offers sex films in its rooms, he provided the following response: That's one of those any-kind-of-'why' questions. It's very universal in nature. For 25 years or more, not just Marriott, but the whole industry has offered a wide range including adult movies.

Asked if he believes customers would miss the pornographic films if they were not offered, Conner said, It would be interesting to know. I don't want this to sound flippant, but who knows?

Marriott International offers families an option to block pornographic movies by calling the front desk or using the remote control, but Focus on the Family and other nutter groups would like the hotel chain to consider a policy where the pornography would automatically be turned off unless a guest requests it.

For some people, that may just be enough of a hindrance that they won't access that material, Weiss said. They won't get caught up in it if they have to come out of the anonymity of ordering it in their room and call somebody.

Marriott executives said they will think about the suggestions and respond to concerns by July 1, though Conner acknowledged that not everyone left the meeting satisfied: We know it's not a perfect world that we live in, unfortunately, so it's not a perfect response for those that we met with yesterday. There were some who said they wanted more of an immediate response or decision. But, based upon the complicated business model and contracts that are in place, we can't simply walk away from it as we speak.

Hotels do not lose a large percentage of revenue when they boycott adult content because they only take 10 to 15% of the profits from the sale of pornographic films, Weiss said. He has faith that Marriott International will live up to its reputation as a family friendly establishment and make its 3,000 hotels porn free: I think at this point we want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they will do the right thing. We're going to take a cautious wait-and-see approach.

Pro-family nutters have wrapped up what is being called a "productive" meeting with officials of Marriott International.

The meeting focused on the hotel chain's practice of selling in room pornographic movies at some of its properties.

Last month, leaders of 47 pro-family groups sent a letter to Marriott CEO John W. Marriott the Third, which asked for a meeting with Marriott executives about the issue.

Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, says the meeting in Washington D.C. was a good first step: Two things came out of the meeting . They are going to look into a system where people would have to call the front desk and get the movie turned on.

Secondly, notes Wildmon, the Marriot executives will discuss the issue further with some of their franchisees. And he says pro-family nutters will have another meeting with Marriott representatives in about six weeks to check progress on the issue.

Nearly 50 nutter organisations are asking the Marriott hotel chain to take pornographic movies out of guest rooms.

In an April 3 letter to CEO John Marriott III, 47 pro-family nutters requested a meeting to discuss the issue. The letter goes on to say that pulling the pay-per-view movies would be in line with Marriott's public statement of promoting the well-being of children and families and stand against ... such tragedies as human trafficking and the exploitation of children.

Among the nutters who signed the letter are: Dr. James Dobson (Focus on the Family), Bishop Harry Jackson (High Impact Leadership Council), Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation), Dr. Richard Land (Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission), Matt Staver (Liberty Counsel), and Robert Peters (Morality in Media).

Don Wildmon, the founder and chairman of the American Family Association, was one of the signatories to the letter. He says it is time for Marriott to put families first: Children can go [into a Marriott room and] accidentally ... access the porn. So we're asking Marriott simply to put people above profits and [to] drop the porn movies from their guest rooms."

Wildmon says so far, Marriott has not responded to a request to meet with representatives of the pro-family groups to discuss the matter.

According to a press release from AFA, Marriott has approximately 2,800 hotels in the U.S. -- and about 2,400 of them offer in-room pornographic movies.