Typically targeting the lonely business traveler or other guest looking for a way to unwind at the end of the day, these premium adult video services, though historically profitable, may be facing increasingly hard times – and an increasingly uncertain future.
Indeed, many of the same market forces that are impacting both the physical and virtual distribution channels are also affecting the consumption of in-room erotica; much to the detriment of profits and chagrin of corporate defenders who may no longer have a very compelling reason to ignore the cries of the enemies of free speech and consumer choice.
While accurate figures are hard to come by as adult PPV figures are rarely broken out of overall "guest services" on publicly available financial reports, anecdotal evidence of a downward usage trend can be found in a "Question of the Day" that was recently posed by technology website Gizmodo which asked its readers "Hotel Porn Or Bring-It-Yourself Porn?"
According to the Gizmodo website, "…in this day and age, with iPods and portable media players and laptops and portable hard drives, what kind of person still orders hotel porn? It's expensive, slightly embarrassing ('Ma'am, I have never even heard of Dirt Pipe Milkshakes'), and unhygienic (think of who touched those remotes before you). So we pose the question to you, our faithful readers. Do you enjoy hotel porn, or do you bring a sack lunch?"
At the time of this writing, 407 respondents accounting for 10.6 percent of the vote stated that they preferred to view hotel erotica, while 3440 respondents accounting for around 89.4 percent of the vote preferred to bring their own porn on the road with them.
There were also over 85 comments, many of which expressed similar sentiments, such as this example posted by "AZTriGuy" who is not a fan of the hotel's watered-down fare: "First off, with this day and age of YouPorn and others, who even needs to pay for porn these days? That and the hotel stuff is always somewhat censored and expensive as hell."
The widespread availability of in-room Wi-Fi or wired broadband access and its resultant doorway to the mountains of free porn on the Internet was frequently cited as a reason why hotel services were being eschewed.
While certainly not a scientific sample, there were a decent number of responses, with this data being compiled within around 24 hours of the poll going live.
The bottom line is simple: fewer people are seeing the need to pay for porn; whether it's at home or on the road – and it's no longer just "the little guys" that are being hurt...