Marriott confirms plans to stop routine giveaway of newspapers

Posted by Soraya Kishtwari on April 14, 2009 at 1:22 PM

The hotel chain has confirmed that it will no longer automatically give guests free newspapers, although those guests who would like a complimentary newspaper will still be given the option.

Marriott International claims that there is less of a demand for newspapers than in previous years and, given this, it would be imprudent to continue to give away potentially unwanted newspapers.

The move is not expected to make the company any significant savings, since it will no longer be buying as many copies and will therefore be expected to pay more per paper, but is instead being publicised as a "green" move.

"We were seeing a lot of unused papers and thought of the waste," said Stephanie Hampton on behalf of Marriott. "We also saw a shift in customer demand and expectations -- 25 percent of them didn't read the hard copy any more, according to our preliminary studies."

Chairman and CEO J.W. Marriott, Jr also reinforced this view, saying: "I visit more than 250 hotels a year, and more often than not, I'm stepping over unclaimed newspapers as I walk down the hallway."

Whether or not surveys were carried out by Marriott to support this is unclear, but in any case, many of us will have seen for ourselves the "unclaimed newspapers" that J. W. Marriott, Jr refers to and while this new approach may be "bad for publishers", as Reuters journalists Deepa Seetharaman and Robert MacMillan note, there is no sense in offering a service just for the sake of it.

Also, as Seetharaman and Macmillan rightly observe, "Marriott's move reflects a wider trend across the United States" and, it could be argued across developed countries, in general, where technological progress has resulted in readers migrating online for their news fix.

USA Today and the Wall Street Journal were automatically offered to guests along with local newspapers, but as from June 1 guests will have to choose just one newspaper or no newspaper at all. This is bound to come as a blow for the hotel chain's newspaper partners, particularly for USA Today, which Reuters says "derives a good portion of its readership from travelers who can pick up the same paper all across the country."

Sources: Reuters , Editor & Publisher