Sandy Young / For Hotel Indigo Newscastle
Rooms at the Hotel Indigo Newcastle in the U.K. have Kindle e-readers in place of the traditional Gideons Bible.
By Vignesh Ramachandran
Travelers who expect to find the Bible in the bedside stand will find a high-tech replacement at the Hotel Indigo in Newcastle, England.?The new hotel has gone digital and is providing guests with Amazon's Kindle e-reader.?Instead of the hard-copy Bible, the Kindle is loaded up with an electronic version of the holy text.
Anyone in the hotel's?148 rooms can request the e-reader for their stay, said Adam Munday, the hotel's general manager. Through July 16, guests can also download other religious texts for free ??as long as prices stay around $8.
Munday explained that the digital shift was influenced by the region's legacy: "Newcastle was formerly a publishing hotspot." The?Literary and Philosophical Society?? the?largest independent library outside London ? is nearby, he said.
"We wanted to reflect this literary history in a very contemporary way so are offering guests the use of cutting-edge Kindles pre-loaded with the Bible, instead of the more traditional hardcopy Gideons Bible that they would expect to find in a hotel," Munday said in a statement.
Swapping out the hard-copy Bible is a shift for travelers who have seen the religious text bedside for years.?The?Gideons International had no comment on the change.
Related: Gideons spread the word one Bible, one room at a time
The e-readers will be permanent at the Hotel Indigo in Newcastle. However, after the two-week trial period, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) ??the company that owns Hotel Indigo?? will determine if it's worth putting Kindles in more of the boutique chain's 44 hotels worldwide, The Telegraph reported.
Hotel Indigo isn't the only hotel to adopt high-tech amenities.
- In 2010, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, another IHG-owned property, gave Apple iPads to its concierge teams.
- London's Eccleston Square hotel has iPads for guests to order room service or book spa treatments.
- And at three of the Morgans Hotel Group's American hotels, guests can use a custom iPad to access hotel services, including room service, wake-up calls, housekeeping and valet parking.
The iPad program has been so successful, a Morgans Hotel Group spokesperson said, that they're looking to expand it abroad.
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