Hilton Hotels & Resorts will no longer offer on-demand porn videos from next year due to sexual exploitation concerns and intense lobbying by an activist group since 2013.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation lauded the Hilton's decision, and removed it from their "Dirty Dozen" list, a lineup of the 12 biggest corporations the activists say fuel exploitation.
An official statement released by the Hilton said that it is "making immediate changes to our global brand standards to eliminate adult video-on-demand entertainment in all our hotels worldwide."
The decision by the hotel chain that owns more than 540 hotels in 78 countries came after the meeting between the company and NCOSE.
Haley Halverson, spokesperson for NCOSE, told the Christian Post that earlier this year Hilton Worldwide had reached out to them expressing their desire to change their policy on porn videos and invited them for a meeting.
"At the meeting, we learned that Hilton Worldwide is committed to helping curb sexual exploitation and certainly open to changing policies they have that contribute to exploitation," said Halverson.
Christian lobby groups including New Zealand based Family First commended the decision by the mega-hotel chain owing over 4,300 properties around the world.
Thousands of members of NCOSE and their allies have campaigned to put an end to sexual exploitation arising from porn sold in the hotels. The on-demand videos will be phased out from the hotels starting from September and completely withdrawn by July 2016.
Family First said that the hotel's decision would help safeguard the interest of families and children.
"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," Bob McCoskrie?, the group's national director told SMH.
He had been advocating these changes after an eight-year-old child was caught by his parents watching porn in the family's hotel room. McCoskrie calls all other hotel chains to adopt porn-free policies for their hotels.
Other successful hotel chains to have implemented a no-porn policy are Marriott, Omni, Drury, Ritz-Carlton and Nordic Choice, according to Halverson.
