Just a random thought I had, every hotel and motel (even independent motels with 20 rooms) have ice machines. What’s the reasoning behind this? Why do hotels and motels all think “our customers need ice on demand?” I assume there’s some kind of “tradition of travel” explanation, but I don’t know what that is.
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Because people like ice in their drinks? Like…
Because Americans like ice. To, like, a weird degree.
This is something I have only ever experienced in the USA. It’s not nearly as common elsewhere in the world.
it’s easier to have the ice make than to have people bothering the front desk for ice at all hours of the day and night.
Ice keeps things cold. People like things to be cold, and some things even need to be cold including food, some drinks, and medications. When people can keep things cold that need to be cold, they are happy hotel guests.
Whenever I travelled with my parents as a kid the first thing they’d do when we got to a hotel would be to send me to the ice machine. They’d put sodas and beers and stuff in it. Nowadays pretty much every hotel on earth has a minifridge in each room though. I don’t think I’ve used the ice machine in a hotel ONCE as an adult.
Bruh where are the mods for questions like this? 😭
When traveling I almost always head to the closest liquor store and buy booze. It’s really nice to have ice for your cocktail just before heading to relax in the hot tub etc .. It’s a thing.
imagine you’re on a road trip. you probably don’t have a fridge built into your car. so instead, you bring a cooler, to keep your food, drinks, and snacks cold. some people might also have medication that needs to be kept cold. you make the cooler cold by putting ice in it. ice melts. so you need more ice. and you’ll probably need more ice AGAIN at your next stop. and again at the next. each of these stops is probably gonna include at hotel.
so the hotel provides ice.
now, these days, a lot of hotels also have mini fridges in the room. but A, those are pretty small so they might not fit everything. and B, you can’t exactly take those with you. so still, you bring a cooler and THAT can be taken with you.
Because Holiday Inn used it as a differentiator at a time where it was common to charge for ice, Holiday Inns took off and other hotels decided that to compete they would also need to offer similar amenities, which included ice makers.
In the US… if you travel beyond that the frequency starts to drop, especially if you’re in a hotel which isn’t as owned by an American firm/caters to people from the US.
Usually it’s for people having drinks in their room and also if you’re getting room service and want ice in your drink. If you’re at a place where there is outdoor activity as the draw it also can be used to fill coolers (some places don’t allow this).
It’s not just for your stay. Driving across country, you need to resupply ice for your drink cooler. Coolers are better at holding temp now, but before the ice would melt in a day
The real short answer is marketing. It was an item the founder of Holiday Inn decided to add to make the brand stand out over early competitors. Needless to say it caught on and stuck, and it’s just something most travelers expect a hotel to have
https://www.rd.com/article/why-do-hotels-have-ice-machines/?sp-force-variant-cro=1
A lot of modern Hotel amenities are the direct result of Kemmons Wilson’s bad holiday day experience in 1952.
The Wilson’s and their 5 children intended to drive from Memphis to Washington, D.C in a car with no air conditioning. Soon after leaving the luggage fell off the car’s roof rack spreading their clothes all over the highway.
The Wilson’s then stayed at a motel and agreed to $6 for the night. The Mom and Dad slept on the bed while the 5 kids were in sleeping bags on the floor. The following morning he was charged $16, including a surcharge $2 extra for each child despite them not using any more bedding or supplies.
Kemmons was furious, and while a normal person would have been angry for a few hours and then let it go, Kemmons decided to do something about it.
After he got home to Memphis he declared that he would solve this problem and open his own Hotel where kids could stay and eat free, and where there would be things for them to do, a pool, and a playground. Where the rooms would be the same size, and beds would be clean. Where breakfast would be served every morning, and where there would be a pastor and a doctor on call. Where staff would be polite and would always know what tourist traps and restaurants were nearby for travelers.
Within a decade there were over 1000 Holiday Inn locations.
Kemmons’ innovations included having free ice machines because hotels used to charge a lot for ice.
Other hotels had to follow suit just to stay competitive.
As for why hotels have ice, Americans like having ice to refill their coolers and for drinks.
Some customers may want a cold drink. An ice machine solves that at a very low cost, so it makes sense for the hotel to install one.
I mostly travel for work, and after a long hard day’s work I like to kick back with some Netflix and a can of soda or maybe a beer.
No one likes room temp beer. So I always try to get a hotel that has an in room refrigerator or at least an ice machine.
I have absolutely booked a more expensive hotel just because it offered a way to cool my drink.
In bygone days when mini-fridges were too expensive to put in every room, guests needed some way to keep their food and bevs.
Also, read old books/movies and you’ll probably start thinking “did these people ever not have a drink in their hand?!”
I agree with the premise of this question – ice machines don’t seem like an important enough thing to justify how ubiquitous they are in hotels.
One time I was at a hotel I stayed at before. In my room was this plastic ice bucket, but I knew other rooms had metal ice buckets. The metal ones were better because the ice didnt melt as fast. I went downstairs to ask for a metal ice bucket. The front desk employee asked me why. My response?
“For ice.”
People just like ice.
I used to use them all of the time back when I lived out of hotels Monday-Friday as a field service tech. I kept a weeks worth of food in a Yeti in my truck and topped off with ice every few days. Those per diem checks really add up when you are not going to a bar/restaurant for every meal.
Industrial ice machines became widely available in the 1890s, and hotels started using them for people to use to preserve food and ice their drinks.
But the real reason you see them at pretty much every American hotel? Because of Holiday Inn. When the hotel chain Holiday Inn was started, the founder put in guest accessible free ice makers, and use that to differentiate them from the hotels that would charge for ice, a practice he had found frustrating during his own travels. Not to be outdone, other hotels adopted it as a standard basic courtesy.
To pack up the venison you just slaughtered in the hotel bathtub. (My last trip was to South Dakota during deer season).
The service industry wants to provide convenient services. People want cold drinks and it’s much easier to put an ice machine on each floor of a hotel rather than making guests go to the lobby/front desk for it.
It’s not as common as it used to be. The Residence Inn I usually stay at has one ice machine on the first floor. Another that I stay at occasionally doesn’t have one at all.
I drink a lot of iced tea; it’s actually a little frustrating. At my usual hotel I request first floor rooms near the ice maker. They usually can do that for me because few people actually ask for first floor rooms.
We travel with a small cooler instead of stopping at a convenience store for a drink of some cut up fruit or cheese.
The ice machine is probably cheaper than putting a freezer in every room. Some hotels might have a mini fridge… maybe. More often the only fridge I’ve seen in hotels tends to be the minibar, which encourages people to buy items from the hotel rather than bring and store their own food and drink.
But a little fridge with a freezer is going to use more electricity than a simple, uniform fridge-only unit. Multiply that across every room, running 24/7, and that cost is going to add up.
So, if you buy a single ice machine for the whole floor, that’s one machine you have to power, and while it might take more juice than an individual fridge:freezer, it probably draws waaaaay less power than 20-30 little freezers.
It also means you don’t have your keep the minibar fridges all that cold, which further cuts down on power consumption. If someone takes a drink out of the minibar and wants it colder? They just go and get some ice from the ice machine.
Plus, how long does an ice machine last? Most of the ones I see in hotels have a design that looks like it came from the early 70s or something. They strike me as pretty rugged pieces of kit. You probably buy it once and let your grandkids replace it when they take over the family business.
This question is very North American-centric. Hotels in Asia do not have ice machines. Guests need to ask room service for ice.
It’s somewhere nice to put your feet after a day of walking.
So you can fill your trash can and put your beers on ice
USAers are obsessed with ice, many countries don’t care and don’t have one in hotels.
Alcohol. Alcohol. Alcohol. Alcohol. Also to keep you cold in the bathtub after your kidneys were removed.
They don’t… It’s pretty much just an American thing.
I think US is the only country where I have seen it..
> I assume there’s some kind of “tradition of travel” explanation…
Yeah, a big part of it is that modern refrigerators, the American expectation that all beverages will be cold, the building of the interstate system and motels to serve them, and the road trip all come from the post-war era. An ice machine was a way to allow all people staying at the hotel to have a cold drink before the in-room minifridge became common.