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One hotel swaps out Bibles for Kindles

The Hotel Indigo tries a two-week experiment with leaving Bible-loaded Kindles in hotel rooms instead of paper Bibles.

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Mark Lennihan/AP
Guests are also allowed to download nonreligious books on the Kindle provided by the hotel, but they must pay for those themselves.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

The ubiquitous Bible in the bedside drawer of a hotel room is getting a technology upgrade in Britain, where the Hotel Indigo, located in Newcastle, is swapping out its paper Bibles for Kindles pre-loaded with the text.

The hotel is scheduled to try it out for a two-week period, from yesterday to July 16, and plans have been made to extend the service to the company’s 44 locations around the world if it’s a success.

General manager of the hotel Adam Munday said the move was an attempt to honor Newcastle’s history as one of the biggest print areas in the country.

“We wanted to reflect this literary history in a very contemporary way,” he told the Telegraph.

If Hotel Indigo guests want another religious text, they are able to purchase another via the Kindle as long as it costs no more than five pounds. Guests can buy other books on the device, but must pay for them separately.

According to a report by MSNBC, the Gideon Society which has been placing Bibles in hotel rooms since 1908, estimates that each Bible left in a hotel room will be read by about 2,300 people.

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