An international hotel chain has announced that it has decided to pull on-demand television access to pornography in its guest rooms, generating applause from Christians and other morality-focused groups.

Hilton Hotels and Resorts, run by Hilton Worldwide, will no longer contract with “adult” program providers after September of this year, and all hotels must phase out on-demand access by July of next year.

“We are making immediate changes to our global brand standards to eliminate adult video-on-demand entertainment in all our hotels worldwide,” the company said in a statement. “While the vast majority of our properties already do not offer this content today, this content will be phased out of all other hotels subject to the terms of their contracts.”

“We believe in offering our guests a high degree of choice and control during their stays with us, including Wi-Fi on personal devices. However, we have listened carefully to our customers and have determined that adult video-on-demand entertainment is not in keeping with our company’s vision and goals moving forward,” it continued.

Hilton had been on the “dirty dozen list” of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a shame list that exposes companies it believes facilitate sexual perversions and addictions in America. Officials with Hilton Worldwide met with the Center earlier this year to express its desire to make changes.

“Hilton has taken a stand against sexual exploitation. Pornography not only contributes to the demand for sex trafficking, which is a serious concern in hotels, but it also contributes to child exploitation, sexual violence, and lifelong porn addictions,” the Center said in a statement this week.

Facebook, YouTube, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Verizon and the U.S. Department of Justice are other entities on the list.

The Christian organization Family First, located in New Zealand, likewise applauded the move.

“This is a great decision for families and for the protection of children. But it is also a great stand against sexual exploitation and recognizing the harms of pornography addiction,” Director Bob McCoskrie wrote in an online blog post. “Society is finally being woken up to the fact that pornography is harmful and leads to addictions, broken marriages, increased sexual violence, child sexual abuse, sex trafficking and prostitution.”

“Hilton is making a great choice not to profit from the harms of hardcore pornography. We now call on other hotel chains to adopt a similar policy,” he said.

As previously reported, the Mormon-founded hotel chain Marriott, which operates hundreds of locations across the country and has been known for its promotion of the Book of Mormon, had been under criticism from Christians groups in the past for its ties to pornography. While the entity announced in 2011 that it was pulling its on-demand “adult” channels from hotel rooms, Christian News Network confirmed with a number of locations yet a year later that the channels were still available for guests.

“The in-room entertainment operators who provide our systems rely upon a certain volume of movie types in order to be economically viable,” J.W. Marriott wrote to Bill Johnson, executive director of the Michigan-based American Decency Association, in 2007. “If we were to eliminate the ‘R’ and non-rated offerings, the systems would not be economic.”

Pornography is said to be a lucrative business in the hotel industry, and while estimates vary, it is stated that collectively $500 million is banked each year by hotel chains nationwide.

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