ive known for years not to get ice in any place like hotels and restaurants because there never cleaned (watch some of those restaurant rescue shows) that and ice hurts my sensitive teeth
It’s in the Bill of Rights.
I have been in a motel or two that had a sign asking guests to not fill coolers. Or perhaps only one cooler. But they were cheapies and probably only had the single machine.
Dennis
Drinking fountains are required by building codes outside of bathrooms, so it’s not too much of a stretch that they could require ice machines (that’s not the case as far as I know, and building codes are set at the state/local level instead of federal but you get the idea). Those are very hard to find in Europe, save for some of the public fountains in Italy. They do have some drinking fountains in the UK though.
Anyway, adding to the ice machine being a product of car culture, they’re also a product of America’s cheap energy culture. That’s a big reason why Americans use so much ice in our drinks in the first place, in no small part because we have relatively cheap electricity and were (mostly) pioneers in refrigeration and air conditioning equipment. Europe and much of the world doesn’t have nearly as much of a history or preponderance of freezers compared to refrigerators. You need a deep freeze if you only drive to the supermarket once a week or less, not so much if you walk the local markets several times a week, if not daily.
If you look at a typical American refrigerator/freezer, especially an over-under versus a side-by-side, you’ll notice that about 90% of the cold air is directed into the freezer, with just a tiny vent into the refrigerator. That’s a good representation of where the majority of the energy is going. That’s just too much electricity and expense, not to mention extra space with the additional insulation required, for a lot of older European households or those in poorer countries. I’ve heard a similar explanation for the lack of clothes dryers in many parts of the world too.
We invented ice. The machine made kind that is. Before that people used frozen pond water. Now imagine driving all day and one hotel has an ice machine and the other has frozen pond water. Which one are you going to choose?
The fear for food spoilage doesn’t make sense when you take into account that many of those countries where there are no ice machines would, until very recently, provide minifridges (nowadays they often are not present, or are present but switched off and empty, you can switch them on). The question there becomes “why some went for ice machines and some for fridges”.
To me that seems to be more of a function of thinking that the outside world is “scary” and “dirty”… except, curiously enough, in ads for clothes softeners. Lots of American HOAs forbid using the big dryer in the sky because it “looks like you can’t afford a dryer”; in other countries, dryers are perceived as something you need to use if there aren’t better options (too rainy, too much clothing for lines).
Dewey Finn already linked to the Slate article I remember explaining that hotels have ice due to competitive pressure. Since Holiday Inn offered free ice and everyone else felt they had to offer free ice as well or they would lose customers.
This trend of matching what your customers offer is effectively enforced when third-party hotel ratings services try to objectively define what’s a four-star hotel versus a three-star hotel or two-star hotel. The ratings services basically look at the amenities that other four star hotels offer and they write those amenities into the guidelines. According to the AAA, four and five diamond hotels should require their bell hops to offer to fill your ice for you when you check in, and the evening housekeeping should refill it for you automatically. http://www.aaa.biz/Approved/files/evaluation/DiamondRatingGuidelines.pdf
I’m sure even modest hotels in the U.S. are expected to offer ice. It’s also probably pretty cheap to offer and thus pick up easy points to get you rated higher in the rankings. A hotel installs the ice maker before the hotel opens and it runs for years with little or no maintenance (including little or no cleaning). For all those years, the hotel is getting those easy ratings points to help it be at least a three-star establishment.
Because the hotel ratings look at what other amenities competitive hotels are offering, they get locked into providing certain amenities that their competitors offer, but no one seems to innovate to offer new things that the reviewers aren’t looking for. As a result, hotels are more likely to offer shoe-shine kits than a free tube of toothpaste. Toothpaste in hotels: Why do they provide shampoo, soap, and high-end toiletries but no toothpaste?. I still haven’t noticed a hotel that offered a USB charger built into the nightstand or the table lamp (or maybe I’ve just overlooked them). Some offer laptop charging outlets on the desk but if I use that, my recharging phone isn’t near my bed. Que sera, sera.
Second time low maintenance has been mentioned. Ice machines are better than they used to be, but not low maintenance. They break and jam often. There are plumbing problems, mold can grow in them, they are expensive to maintain. Much less expensive than maintaining refrigerators with freezers in every room, but not what’s usually considered low maintenance.
A reasonable point, but they’re still low maintenance compared to, say, a swimming pool, or a breakfast bar, that has to be serviced every day.
The only hotel I’ve ever stayed at that didn’t have an ice machine available to guests was a higher-end boutique hotel in an old brick building in Seattle (so old a building, in fact, that there’s no elevator and no room to add one). At that hotel, if you want ice, you have to call the bar (or the front desk if the bar is closed for the night) and they’ll send someone up with a bag for you.
When I first started work as a bar cellarman in a London pub, back in the 60s, we had our ice delivered daily on the back of a lorry by some italian guys. The company was “supercortemaggiore” or something like that and I think they had a virtual monopoly.
The ice was in big blocks covered with sacking and they handled it with hooks. They would leave one or two blocks in my cellar, and I would spend the next half hour or so chipping small chunks out for the ice buckets in the bars.
Many hotels at that time didn’t have anything more than a washbasin in the rooms, let alone a shower, toilet or fridge. There would have been ice in the bar though, if there was a bar.
The Icehotel in Sweden has all the ice you can possibly want, and you won’t even need to leave your room. http://www.icehotel.com/hotel/rooms/cold-rooms/
I’ve been in hotels where I’ve seen people filling up several gallon bottles from the orange juice machine at the breakfast bar. Never underestimate people’s ability to abuse “free”. 
Ahh… But.
My Wife and I where vacationing in Germany a few years ago staying at smaller hotels.
Went down to the bar and just wanted to take a few beers up to the room. Of course I was sent on my way with specific glasses for each beer. And, since the bar closed early, I was just told to come down and get whatever I wanted out of the refrigerator and make a note of it and the room number.
What makes you think it’s a legal requirement? I would say it is a common practice of hotels/motels providing this convenience to its customers. No legal requirement.
Companies do lots of things, that are not required by law. Most companies that have substantial number of employees in the US provide 401k plans. Psst, guess what? They aren’t required to.
Ugh. Ice machines should be cleaned every three months. Ice machines should also be inspected by the health department twice a year. And don’t leave the scoop in the bin with all your nasty hand germs!
I see that often. But I also generally stay at cheap places.
…Any hotel catering to American tourists. China, Singapore, Berlin, Paris…
Almost all Japanese hotels (from local ryokan to discount business hotels to 4-star+ city hotels) I’ve stayed in have ice machines available or free ice service upon request.
Thanks TriPolar. I was uninformed. “Low-maintenance” is somewhat subjective. I imagined that they were at least as good as home ice makers that generally work thousands of times with no maintenance at all. They still require less maintenance than, let’s say, a bathroom that requires cleaning and restocking every day for every room. An ice maker probably services hundreds of guests on average before it needs any attention at all, right? This still seems pretty low maintenance to me.