Bible left by the Gideons in hotel room.
Guests at a British luxury hotel may be surprised they won’t find a Gideons Bible waiting for them within their bedside nightstand, but probably not as surprised as they’ll be to find a Kindle there instead.
The high-end Indigo Hotel in the northern city of Newcastle has swapped out the typical King James hardcover in its 148 guest rooms, replacing them all with an Amazon e-reader that comes with the Bible pre-loaded and allows guests to add any other religious texts they want, up to about $8 in download fees.
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Guests can also download any secular text they choose during their stay at typical e-book rates, which are then charged to their room.
The Kindles are a pilot program for hotel chain, which hopes to expand their use to the rest of its 44 locations around the world.
Adam Munday, the hotel’s general manager, told the Telegraph that Newcastle’s status as one of the largest and oldest printing centers in the country and the home of the Literary and Philosophical Society — Britain’s largest independent library outside of London — made his hotel a natural choice to tell a contemporary story of the area’s history: “We wanted to reflect this literary history in a very contemporary way.”