If you’re keeping the porn-free score, it’s LodgeNet, Marriott and Omni, at least that we know of…

from www.usatoday.com – Now that Marriott is starting to phase out porn in its new hotels, Hotel Check-In checked in with Omni Hotels to see what being porn-free has meant to the Dallas-based luxury hotel chain.

Omni’s ownership, led by Texas billionaire Robert Rowling, in 1999 decided to eliminate all adult entertainment offerings from Omni’s in-room TV systems back in the days when adult entertainment was still a bigger money maker.

It was a moral decision, said Omni spokesperson Caryn Kboudi. It had nothing to do with changing in-room-entertainment platforms or declining movie-rental sales related to an uptick in the number of travelers who carry their own entertainment – the primary factors that drove Marriott’s decision.

Yet, within six months of Omni taking a porn-free position, the chain stumbled upon a new, lucrative business – religious meetings such as evangelist Billy Graham’s annual convention.

Tamie Smith, the global sales director for Omni who handles the chain’s religious business, told me that she landed her job directly as a result of Omni’s decision.

“We were an organization that had never tapped into the religious market,” she said. “My position was created when the ownership made the announcement.”

Within months of Omni’s 1999 press release, Focus on the Family – a prominent group for Christian conservatives – mentioned the news in its June 2000 newsletter.

Today, Omni’s 1,067-room Atlanta hotel handles major conventions for large ministries such as Graham’s and TD Jakes Ministries, Smith told me.

Smith figured Marriott’s decision would be a hot topic at this week’s Religious Conference Management Association’s annual convention in Tampa, Fla., which started Tuesday and ends Friday.

The meeting includes some 400 meeting planners who represent religious groups and roughly 600 travel suppliers – including sales representatives big chains such as Omni, Marriott, Hilton and Starwood.

“I’m sure (Marriott’s) sales managers will be utilizing this,” Smith told me.

Smith said that Omni’s position doesn’t alone win Omni a convention or event, but it does open the door for her to speak to the meeting planner and possibly to the ultimate decision makers.

“It gets my foot in the door where it might not have. This is big business,” she said.

“We have not spent any dollars on advertising, so the conversation usually begins at a trade show with my saying, ‘By the way, did you know?…’,” she said. “After their ears perk up, I explain about the owner not wanting to expose his children to pornographic movies. We obviously carry the same attributes that a religious client might have.”

Interestingly, Omni’s Kboudi said Omni has never spent money promoting its porn-free position.

“We never spent any money going out and putting this into our marketing materials talking about it or doing a second press release. We didn’t want to create a marketing message around this,” she said. “This is just who we are.”

Whether the religious group business has offset the loss of revenue that it might have collected from adult-movie-rental sales all these years isn’t entirely clear. Omni says it doesn’t calculate the profits it might have made if the hotels had kept renting porn.