Here's Why Bibles Are Becoming Less Common In American Hotel Rooms

There was a time when 95% of U.S. hotel rooms had Bibles in them. That's the statistic that STR (via the LA Times), a company that specializes in data analytics for the hospitality industry, logged back in 2006. Regardless of one's religious persuasion, you could slide open the nightstand drawer in most American hotels and find the Bible there. They were as much a part of the backdrop for stateside travelers as the minibar. To some, they may have also been part of the unexpected effect travel can have on your spirituality. By 2018, however, STR's biennial survey found that the number of Bibles in U.S. hotel rooms was down to 65%, per The Washington Post.

The following year, another survey by the Pew Research Center determined that the same number of American adults, 65%, now identified as Christian. This, too, represented a significant drop from the early 1990s, when 90% of the country identified as Christian. As hotels respond to the changing face of religion in America, some have made it part of their business strategy not to confront guests with an "amenity" that could clash with their own religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

For big chains like Hilton, the choice of whether to stock rooms with religious materials is at the discretion of individual hotel operators. However, the world's largest hotel chain, Marriott, was founded by a practicing Mormon, and it has long provided both the Bible and Book of Mormon in the guest rooms at most of its properties. Yet, even Marriott has begun veering away from this tradition while courting the millennial market with two newer hotel brands, Moxy and Edition.

The proliferation of free Wi-Fi has also contributed to Bibles becoming less common in U.S. hotel rooms, as it's just as easy to read the Good Book online now than it is to pull it out of a drawer. As such, some hotels have simply transferred their physical copies of the Bible from guest rooms to the front desk, where they remain available on request. In a bid for inclusivity, other hotels have begun offering "spiritual menus" beyond the Bible and Book of Mormon.

That includes some hotels under the Trump brand, which has been known to include a note in the drawer on top of the Bible, offering other religious texts like the Talmud, the Qur'an, and the Bhagavad Gita. This may come as a surprise given that the brand's namesake, owner Donald Trump, made headlines for hawking $60 "God Bless the USA" Bibles while campaigning for presidential reelection in 2024. By appealing to people of other faiths like Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, however, such spiritual menus enable hotels like Trump's to hedge their bets when it comes to potentially alienating any guests.

Hotels are also reacting to the growing contingent of guests who would rather not see any reminders of religion in their room. In its efforts to uphold the separation of church and state, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has successfully lobbied to have Bibles removed from hotel rooms in some cases. Ironically, the non-theistic foundation is based in Wisconsin, a state with ties to two founders of the Gideons International, a group that spent decades donating free Bibles to hotels.

On some hotel Bible covers, you may have seen the words "placed by the Gideons" — the gold imprint of the evangelical organization, which has distributed over 2.5 billion Bibles since 1908. The organization traces its roots back to an 1898 encounter between two Christian traveling salesmen in Wisconsin, who found themselves sharing a double room at a hotel without enough vacancies. If you're ever passing through the town of Superior on a Montana road trip, you can visit the site where the Gideons placed their first 25 Bibles in a hotel. The Superior Hotel, as it was known, is long gone, but on the wall outside Superior Laundry, there's a plaque explaining its historical significance.

Today, the Gideons operate out of Nashville, where you can take a trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame. The museum's rotunda is ringed with the title, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," a 1907 hymn that's been around as long as the Gideons have been supplying hotels with Bibles. It's a testament (no pun intended) to how the trappings of Christianity have permeated American culture well beyond presidents and witnesses in court swearing oaths on Bibles.

In an increasingly secular America, not everyone is eager to see that continue. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has even created skull-and-crossbones stickers for its supporters to put on hotel Bibles, reading, "Warning: Literal belief in this book may endanger your health and life." As U.S. hotels keep catering to guests that are less religious and less analog, your best bet for finding the Bible in your room may just be to go online.