Yes it is all relative. It won’t last as long as a your home ice maker but it has to make and dispense far more ice in that time. Compared to something like a soda vending machine it’s very inefficient, those things last for ages. So among machines, ice machines aren’t that low maintenance, but yes, compared to a hotel bathroom that has to be manually cleaned and stocked on a daily basis it’s a bargain.
I’d have to think that anything that is in one (or one-per-floor) place is going to be lower maintenance than anything that is in every room just based on the maintenance guy not having to move around as much.
That depends on your definitions. Two of the same items will require more maintenance than one, but that’s not how to define a single unit as high or low maintenance. If we try to keep apples to apples comparisons there’s not much to look at. Ice machines and vending machines are often found together, but the vending machines will need far fewer repairs and less cleaning than the ice machine. On a per unit basis, for devices used in a hotel with identifiable maintenance costs, ice machines are high on the list.
The question here is about why US hotels have ice machines, and low maintenance costs are not a reason. Refrigerators in every room would probably have higher costs, but so would having trained polar bears deliver ice to the rooms, and not providing ice at all has extremely low maintenance costs. Hotels don’t provide ice machines because of negligible costs, they do it for marketing reasons.
I think other countries are more used to doing without stuff than Americans. At least they used to be.
We invented stuff too.