My interest is not in whether or not to ban these offerings from hotel rooms, my interest is the decision-making process of the hotel and the guest as to whether or not they will provide and the guest will choose to view any content; adult material probably gets more attention in the popular press as is the case here. Although straying outside my field of expertise, if a local market's motels and hotels are selling significant amounts of "adult" programming, this might have implications for the application of obscenity laws in that market.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of fuzzy reference I've found to estimate the use of these offerings in private motel/hotel rooms:
[Quoting a crusader against adult videos being available in hotels and motels (and, I assume, bed and breakfast locations)]:
As more and more of these (hardcore) titles become available, we're going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of the hotels," he said. "Hotels are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores." MONEY-MAKER Precise statistics on in- room adult entertainment are hard to come by. By some estimates, adult movies are available in roughly 40 percent of the nation's hotels, representing more than 1.5 million rooms. Industry analysts suggest that these adult offerings generate 60 percent to 80 percent of total in-room entertainment revenue - several hundred million dollars a year.
Source:
The Augusta Chronicle. Augusta, Ga.: Aug 23, 2006. pg. A.10 as cited in ProQuest, accessed 30 September 2006.
Perhaps this is all an academic exercise as long as the guest has (especially broadband) access to the Internet in the room.
