Hotel offers free camcorders to guests; what about mobiles?

Scott Seaborn, the ‘Mobile Boy’ at Ogilvy, tweeted the following today:

Hotel offers guests a free camcorder for the weekend http://bit.ly/NlyiH #advertising #trends

He’s linking to this Springwise post about a hotel chain experimenting with offering guests a Flip Ultra video camcorder to record their memories if they stay over a weekend at the Omni hotel chain.

This is a genuis concept in itself.

But I wonder why hotels don’t offer the use of unlocked mobile handsets in this manner. I know there’s a few more complicating issues with mobiles vs ultra-simple Flip cameras. But if you offered the devices sim-free and unlocked, so it’s inherently your problem to supply the sim card, geez, that would really swing my business. This is a particularly acute issue — unlocked handsets — for anyone coming from a CDMA network to a GSM country (e.g. Verizon/Sprint users visiting the UK).

Hotels could offer a range of unlocked handsets for use during the guest’s stay. They could further off a series of pre-paid sim cards from the major operators.

I’m not talking about cell-phone-hire, which is often a total rip-off. I’m talking about the ability to borrow an unlocked phone and supply me with a pre-paid sim card to get me started. This would be total genius.

In fact, supplying me with a local sim card — or even a MAXroam card — would be the first step.

If I (grudgingly) stump up £10 or £15 a day for internet (which most can expense to their company), I wonder how many would spunk £25 for a MAXroam card and £10 a day for the use of an unlocked Nokia E71?