International hotel chain pulls in-room pornography from its 4,900 locations

A leading hotel company has decided to remove on-demand pornography from every location in its international chain.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which has 4,900 properties in 100 nations around the globe, had an existing policy not to show films rated NC-17 or above, but it strengthened penalties for hotels that refused to comply with its standards.
“We are grateful to Intercontinental Hotels Group for the priority the company placed on working with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in order to ensure that none of its hotels profit from sexual exploitation,” said Dawn Hawkins, the executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “InterContinental Hotels Group has committed to rigorously enforce a brand standard prohibiting the distribution of pornography across all of its brands, such as Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza.”
Hilton Hotels announced it would remove pornography from its hotel chain last August. That October, the Hyatt Hotel Corporation followed suit, removing in-room porn from its 160,000 hotel rooms.
Hawkins called porn-free televisions the “new normal” in the hospitality industry. “Increasingly hoteliers are recognizing that pornography is an exploitative means of profit, partly due to pornography’s link to prostitution, sex trafficking, and sexual violence.”
Free streaming pornography has largely made in-room, on-demand pornographic services unprofitable. Robert Habeeb, president and CEO of First Hospitality Group, estimated that a 200-room hotel could make $2,000 a month from the rental of pornography from each room's TV menu.
But on demand movie rentals have been cut nearly in half since 2007, according to PKF Consulting, an expert on the hotel industry.