Hilton Removes Porn From Hotel Rooms After Hearing Sexual Exploitation Concerns

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Wednesday, August 19, 2015

An exterior shot of the Hilton Midtown in New York June 7, 2013. The New York Hilton Midtown, a 2,000-room hotel in Manhattan's commercial district filled with business travelers, tourists and conference-goers, confirmed this week that it would end room service. Picture taken June 7, 2013. | (Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly)

After meeting with anti-pornography advocates, major global hotel chain Hilton Worldwide announced that it will no longer include video-on-demand adult entertainment at their facilities.

Hilton, a hospitality company that boasts over 4,300 properties, recently made the announcement that there will be a gradual phasing out of pornographic entertainment at the hotels they own which offer it.

A spokesperson for Hilton provided The Christian Post with the official statement released by the company, which noted that they were "making immediate changes to our global brand standards to eliminate adult video-on-demand entertainment in all our hotels worldwide."

"While the vast majority of our properties already do not offer this content today, this content will be phased out of all other hotels subject to the terms of their contracts," continued the statement.

"We believe in offering our guests a high degree of choice and control during their stays with us, including Wi-Fi on personal devices. However, we have listened carefully to our customers and have determined that adult video-on-demand entertainment is not in keeping with our company's vision and goals moving forward."

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography organization, celebrated the decision by Hilton to remove the on-demand access to adult entertainment.

Haley Halverson, spokesperson for NCOSE, explained to CP that thousands of NCOSE members and their allies have been lobbying Hilton to remove the adult entertainment since 2013, when NCOSE put the company on their "Dirty Dozen" list.

"Earlier this year, Hilton Worldwide reached out to us explaining that they were looking at making these changes and to set up a meeting to talk about these issues in person," said Halverson.

"At the meeting, we learned that Hilton Worldwide is committed to helping curb sexual exploitation and certainly open to changing policies they have that contribute to exploitation."

Halverson also told CP that NCOSE "expected this to take longer, even though they seemed favorable."

"We are grateful that they moved this policy through rather quickly as they announced to us today that all Hilton Worldwide locations were notified today of this policy change," continued Halverson.

"We hope that Hilton's decision to remove their on-demand pornography will influence other hotel chains to do the same. Other successful hotel chains such as Marriott, Omni, Drury, Ritz-Carlton and Nordic Choice Hotels have already implemented policies against pornographic videos, as well."