How many times did you use the phone book during your last hotel stay?
Lodging owners say not enough to make it worth keeping them around. Some major hotel chains are giving bulky telephone directories the boot from guest rooms.
Earlier this week Omni Hotels announced plans to eliminate phone books from its 45 hotels.
“We found that that no one uses them anymore,” a hotel spokesperson said. “They just collect dust and take up drawer space.”
What’s more, the hotel points out, they aren’t good for the environment. Omni execs say they plan to recycle more than 30,000 phone books and hope to conserve even more paper by offering guests Internet access to local information.
And Omni is not alone. Hyatt Hotels, Hyatt Place, Kimpton Hotels and several chains operated by Starwood Hotels (including Westin, Sheraton, Aloft and Element) no longer carry phone books in their rooms. In addition, Hilton and InterContinental Hotels’ Indigo have dropped phone books as “a brand standard,” or an item that must be stocked, and left the decision to toss the directories up to individual hotel. Managers at the aforementioned hotels say they still have phone books available at the front desk, but they are severely underused.
The hotel chains say they opted to get rid of the books to cut down on paper waste and free up space in guest room drawers. But, more than anything says hoteliers; the majority of their guests use Internet access on their laptop computers or smartphones such as BlackBerry to obtain local information so the need for in-room phone books is no longer there.
In Omni’s case it offers free Wi-Fi in rooms for its loyalty program members and for all guests in the lobby. Guests who aren’t loyalty program members pay $9.95 per day.
What do you think about the change? Will you miss the bulky phone books?
I know I will miss them less than I will bathtubs.
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