Sometimes technological change sort of creeps up on you, and you find yourself one day doing something very differently—and having done so for a long time—without realizing you'd shifted your behavior.
Consider, say, telephones in hotels. A few years ago, hotels were festooned with pay phones (much-beloved by reporters covering hotel-based events) and hotels made a small fortune charging exorbitant rates to guest who phoned home (or elsewhere) from their room phones.
But when was the last time you used a phone in a hotel? Hotel pay phones are a thing of the past, and I can't remember the last time I even touched a hotel room phone except to call the front desk or room service. The ubiquity of cell phones has made this formerly essential (and highly profitable for the hotel) service a thing of the past.
Same thing, I suspect, with free newspapers at hotels. I'm not a USA Today-basher, but I realized recently that I haven't read a copy of the McPaper in years. Literally in years. At many hotels, USA Today (or a copy of the local paper) is still left in front of your door, but these days I find myself picking it up in the morning as I walk out of the room and tossing it in a corner or in the trash, unread. Why? Because I've already been online with my laptop or phone and found out just about everything that paper could have told me that I needed to know to start my day: latest news, sports scores, the weather, etc.
Turns out hotel giant Marriott has noticed this behavior among its guests as well. The company is ending automatic delivery of papers to its guests, though they'll still be available on request or in the lobby. Marriott says guest demand for newspapers has dropped 25 percent (hard to say how they came up with that figure, but I'll bet it's on the low side).
Marriott claims to have invented the idea of free newspapers for guests 25 years ago, in partnership with USA Today, which has long enjoyed a nice circulation bump from hotel newspaper distribution (I mean, who actually buys USA Today regularly?). But it turns out that Marriott CEO J.W. Marriott Jr. was noticing the same thing I did: "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." he said. "This new program is more guest-focused."
OK, and it saves money and is "greener," too. But it's yet another way that technology is bringing incremental change to our lives—and driving another nail into the coffin of the low-tech printed newspaper.
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