Sheraton free-overnight-stay promotion excludes observant Jews
Posted Sep 30, 2009 by Jonathan KamensFrom October 6 to October 9, Sheraton will be giving customers the opportunity to win a free overnight stay at one of 86 recently renovated Sheraton hotels across the United States and Canada. The free overnight stays will be on a single night, Friday, October 23. By only allowing the free overnight stays on a Friday, Sheraton is excluding observant Jews from participating in this promotion.
I just sent the following message about this to the company:
It is a shame that the one night you've selected for your "Check-in on us giveaway", October 23, is a Friday night, thus completely precluding the participation of observant Jews in the promotion. It is difficult to impossible to properly observe the Sabbath, which for observant Jews starts before sundown on Friday night and ends after sundown Saturday night, in a hotel, and thus observant Jews do not stay at hotels on Friday or Saturday nights unless it is completely unavoidable.
I doubt you intended to exclude observant Jews when planning this promotion. Nevertheless, the effect of offering a free night only on a Friday does, in fact, discriminate against your Jewish customers.
If you would like to let the company how you feel about their exclusion of observant Jews from this promotion, you can contact them at Sheraton@sheraton.com.
The whole world doesn't shut down for Shabbat just because we do. Keeping Shabbat, especially in the Diaspora, requires sacrifice. Not having the chance to enter a sweepstakes for a free night in a hotel is not much of a sacrifice, as sacrifices go. Leave them alone.
The whole world doesn’t shut down for Shabbat just because we do.
That's true, but irrelevant.
Keeping Shabbat, especially in the Diaspora, requires sacrifice.
That's also true, but also irrelevant. I don't think that when Hashem ordained that we keep the Shabbat, and when Hazal created the layers of halachot surrounding the Av Melachot, that either of them was thinking, "Hmm, let's see what we can do to make it harder for Jews to participate in sales promotions offered by gentiles!"
The sacrifices we are expected to make to keep the Shabbat are pretty clearly delineated by halacha. I see no reason to gratuitously add to them for the sake of diasporic self-flagellation. Indeed, as the saying goes, "Anything that is not prohibited, is permitted."
It is obnoxious for a major corporation to offer a promotion that unnecessarily excludes Jews. It would be equally obnoxious for them to unnecessarily exclude Muslims, or Christians, or women, or left-handed people, or redheads. We can and should let them know it.
Contrast that with my recent extremely positive experience at the Marriott in Hartford, CT, when my family and I were stranded there over Shabbat. You can be sure that the next time I'm looking for a hotel to patronize, I'll be focusing on Marriott over Sheraton!
"It is difficult to impossible to properly observe the Sabbath, which for observant Jews starts before sundown on Friday night and ends after sundown Saturday night, in a hotel"
No it's not.
Perhaps you interpret "difficult", "impossible", or "properly" differently than I do. Here are some of the barriers I see to proper observance of Shabbat in a hotel:
Most hotels nowadays don't allow candles or any other form of open flame in the rooms, so no lighting Shabbat candles.
Most hotels nowadays, including almost certainly the recently renovated Sheraton hotels, use electronic locks instead of key locks, a problem for Jews who do not use lights on Shabbat,
Many hotels have motion sensors on the lights, also a problem for some Jews.
Even if you figure out how to get into and out of the room, there's probably no shul within walking distance of the hotel.
The hotel probably isn't inside an eruv.
It's rather difficult to get to and from your room if you aren't on a very low floor — American Sheraton hotels do not have Shabbat elevators.
The light you leave on for Shabbat dinner will still be on when you want to go to sleep.
There's no Kosher food at the hotel, so you have to bring your own.
It's rather difficult to store in a hotel room enough food for three proper Shabbat meals, plus breakfast.
Even if you manage that, there's no way to heat any of the food, and hot food on Shabbat is a very strictly observed minhag for many frum Jews.
> It is obnoxious for a major corporation to offer a promotion that unnecessarily excludes Jews.
How do you know whether the timing was "necessary" or not? Most likely, they determined that giving away a free Friday night was the strategy most likely to result in people paying for an additional night. Maybe the resulting revenue projection was "necessary" for the marketer who came up with the scheme to get it past the operations folks. Whatever. In any case, they had their reasons, and I guarantee that they had nothing to do with excluding Jews.
>> The whole world doesn’t shut down for Shabbat just because we do.
> That’s true, but irrelevant.
It's very relevant. You're expecting this huge corporation to design an international marketing promotion with your particular practices in mind, regardless of whatever other considerations they might have. It's presumptuous.
You're taking this way too seriously. They're not depriving you of life, liberty, or property. They're not preventing you from booking a room in their hotels. They're not giving a free room to everyone else but you. They're giving people a [small] chance to win a single free night in a hotel room on a night that might or might not be convenient to them, in hotels that happen to not be very conducive environments to keeping Shabbat. This chance that you're missing out on has an exoected cash value of maybe $1, if we assume that not too many people register for the sweepstakes. If your local grocer stood on the corner one Saturday handing out free candy bars, would you picket if he didn't do the same on Sunday?
>>Keeping Shabbat, especially in the Diaspora, requires sacrifice.
> That’s also true, but also irrelevant. I don’t think that when Hashem ordained that we keep the Shabbat, and when Hazal created the layers of halachot surrounding the Av Melachot, that either of them was thinking, “Hmm, let’s see what we can do to make it harder for Jews to participate in sales promotions offered by gentiles!”
My point is not to create a new prohibition; it's to describe the reality. You've chosen to behave as God says Jews must. Sometimes, that's going to be compatible with external narishkeit that you're interested in, and sometimes it isn't. You don't get to watch Saturday morning cartoons, you have to find out about some baseball games after the fact, and you can't go see Jonathan Coulton when he performs in Cleveland on October 23rd. My point: Get used to it; it's part of being observant. When what you're missing rises beyond narishkeit, that's when you should start raising a stink and expecting the world to make accommodations to your chosen (as far as they're concerned) lifestyle.
Of course, there are cases where reasonable people can disagree about the importance of the event. I'm not sure I'm in favor of Hillel pressuring an American university to move its commencement exercises from Friday (more convenient for everyone else) to Monday when Friday is Shavuot, but I can understand people feeling that walking in their graduation is pretty important to them. I don't really get how having a chance to win a hotel stay is that important to you. If it is, though, here's a proposal that's more likely to get you a chance to win: Take down this call to annoy Sheraton and instead send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope. I'll send you a dollar. Use the dollar to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket. If it hits for a few hundred dollars, use the money to book a renovated Sheraton room on Motzaei Shabbat, October 24, or whatever night you please.
How do you know whether the timing was “necessary” or not?
All of the reasons you gave why they chose Friday night may indeed be true. And they may respond to my complaint by saying, "Sorry, there's a reason why we chose Friday night, and we can't really offer other nights as an option." That would be a reasonable response, and I'd have no problem with it.
However, I think it's more likely that they chose Friday night because it's simply the most obvious choice, and I also think it's likely that it would be no skin off their nose to let people who can't come on a Friday night come on some other night instead.
I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out to them the problem that those people have with Friday night and asking them if they can accommodate those people.
I think if a number of people point it out to them, they are more likely to actually have someone in a position to do something about it, spend a little time thinking about it, which is why I asked others to complain as well.
You’re expecting this huge corporation to design an international marketing promotion with your particular practices in mind…
Yes, I am, if that huge corporation expects their marketing promotion to encourage me to patronize their business. And that, after all, is the whole point of the promotion, isn't it — to draw more business?
They may decide that the amount of business they'd gain by making accommodations for people like me isn't worth the trouble. That's a legitimate decision, certainly. But again, what does it hurt to let them know there's a problem and ask if they can solve it?
You’re taking this way too seriously.
Frankly, it seems like the people who are disagreeing with me about this are taking it more seriously than I am.
"Sometimes, that’s going to be compatible with external narishkeit that you’re interested in, and sometimes it isn’t…."
The difference between all the other examples you gave and this situation is that for all the other examples, there is no practical way to accommodate the needs of observant Jews, whereas in the situation we're talking about, it would be easy for Sheraton to accommodate. If it weren't, I wouldn't have asked.
John,
Wouild you like to be on my raido show sometime?
It's far more troubling that Sheraton was one of the sponsors of the Qatar Open tennis tournament which doesn't allow Israeli Jews (http://southafricansinqatar.netfirms.com/text/qinfo.htm).
Getting upset about this promotion really sounds quite absurd. You're complaining about a promotional giveaway — something you have not earned, or even won at this point in time. Have you any reason to suspect that the Sheraton was intending to discriminate against observant Jews? Have you called up the hotel and asked them what sort of accommodations they offer for observant Jews? Perhaps it wouldn't even be an issue — I'm fairly certain you're not the first Sabbath observer to stay in one of their hotels.
(That was referring to the 2006 tournament, not the one in which Shahar Pe'er was allowed into the country.)
Jon would you ever like to be on the radio show I host?