The Real Reason Hotels Have Bibles

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Discover why hotels carry Bibles and other religious texts

Co-authored by Mark Russell and Janice Tieperman

Last Updated: November 19, 2024 Fact Checked

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Overview

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Fun Facts about Hotel Room Bibles

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Books of Mormon in Hotel Rooms

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Expert Interview

If you’ve stayed at an American hotel chain before, there’s a good chance that you’ve found a copy of the Bible tucked away in your nightstand. At this point, the book seems as commonplace as the hotel bathroom’s bottles of soap and shampoo—but why exactly is that? We’re taking a closer look at the origins of this unique hotel tradition, so you can be in the know before your next hotel room stay.

Things You Should Know

Hotel Bibles (also known as Gideon’s Bibles) are placed there by The Gideons International, a Christian evangelist organization, to spread the Christian faith.
You can take the Bible from a hotel room if you really want to—Gideons International will just replace it with a new copy.
Fewer hotels are placing Bibles in hotel rooms nowadays because people tend to be less religious than they were in the past.

Section 1 of 3:

Why do hotels put Bibles in the rooms?

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The Gideons International, a Christian men’s organization, donates Bibles to hotels in an attempt to spread the message of Christianity to passing travelers. Back in 1899, two men bonded after being forced to share a room in a jam-packed hotel. Together, they created a Christian men’s organization dedicated to evangelism, and, in 1908, they began spreading physical copies of the Bible and New Testament to hotels. While the group is best known for their hotel-based ministry, they also donate copies via other public avenues, like prisons, hospitals, abuse shelters, and more.^{[1]
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Section 2 of 3:

Fun Facts about Bibles in Hotel Rooms

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1
You’re allowed to take the Bible from a hotel room. The Gideons International website doesn’t have an official policy listed, but it’s well-established that people are allowed to take and keep their hotel room Bible if they feel so motivated. Gideon International simply sticks a new Bible in the hotel room for the next guest to potentially peruse.^{[2]
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- The Gideons International group reports that about 1 in 4 people read through the Bible in their nightstand drawer, with each individual book crossing paths with up to 2,300 hotel room visitors.^{[3]
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  Research source} There is no official data provided to back up these claims, though.
Back in 2008, you could find a copy of the Bible in about 84% of American hotel rooms. Eight years later, in 2016, that percentage hit 69%, with the total number continuing to fall in the years after.^{[4]
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Research source} In fact, statistics show that fewer and fewer Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) identify with religions like Christianity.^{[5]
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Pew Research Center
Nonpartisan thinktank conducting research and providing information on public opinion, demographic trends, and social trends

Go to source} With this in mind, some hotels intentionally leave Bibles out of hotel rooms.^{[6]
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Many hotel chains aren’t required to put a Bible in each hotel room. While the Marriott hotel chain specifically requires Bibles in all of its hotel rooms (with a few exceptions), most hotel chains do not. Groups like Hilton or Hyatt let individual owners decide if religious texts are handed out or not.^{[7]
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- Some hotels choose to take a more personalized approach by giving visitors the option to request a copy of their book of faith.

Section 3 of 3:

Why is there a Book of Mormon in some hotel rooms?

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Marriott hotels offer The Book of Mormon in many of their rooms. Unlike other American hotel chains, Marriott requires many of their establishments to supply copies of both The Bible and The Book of Mormon (since the Marriott family is a long-time fixture in the Mormon church). There are certain exceptions to this rule, though—some Milliennial-centric Marriott chains, for instance, don’t have Bibles in the hotel rooms to better cater to their potential guests.^{[8]
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- Marriott also doesn’t leave copies of Bibles in non-Christian countries like Indonesia or Vietnam.