Step off an elevator in almost any American hotel and you'll find it: a humming ice machine, free for the taking. Step off an elevator at a hotel in London or Paris, and you'll find a confused front desk wondering why anyone would want such a thing.
The free hotel ice machine is, very much, an American invention. According to Slate and Reader's Digest, the man to thank is Kemmons Wilson, founder of Holiday Inn. When he opened the first Holiday Inn in Memphis in 1952, Wilson was fed up with paying surcharges for ice at other hotels. He decreed that ice would be free at his hotels, and put machines on every floor. The chains followed suit, and the practice never went away.
The deeper reason, though, is that Americans simply like ice more than just about anyone else. Mark Twain wrote about it in 1890. Charles Dickens, visiting America, was reportedly horrified at the mounds of it in American drinks. According to CNN, ice historian Amy Brady puts it bluntly: Americans are unique in the world for their obsession with ice.
In much of Europe, ice is considered bad for the digestion, or simply unnecessary. Tap water comes room temperature. Drinks come room temperature. Beer is famously served cool, not cold. Ask for ice and you may get a cube or two, brought reluctantly from the bar.
So American travelers, take heart: it's not you. The ice machine down the hall is one of the small, strange comforts of home.
