Ice bucket. We chill wine bottles.

Hotel’s need good ice dispensers so that you can fill a bathtub with ice after removing your tinder date’s kidneys.

As a kid I thought this was just a weird hotel thing. Got the backstory eventually.

TL;DR: ice became commonplace around the time motel chains spread across the US.

Ice was once an exotic import only nice hotels could offer. Its perceived luxury remained decades after refrigeration allowed manufacture. Hotels could still charge for it, so they did, but in the ‘50s and ‘60s ice went from cheap to essentially free.

Concurrently, roadside motor-hotel (motel) chains spread across the US. Among these, “Holiday Inn” was the first to offer ice as a complementary amenity. Competitors followed suit. National roll-out at every motel franchise happened quickly. Soon nearly every hotel offered self-serve ice as a standard amenity.

Hence our icy embarrassment of riches.

Some of us are from the warmer climes and appreciate the healing power of ice. And soon, all of us will be from the warmer climes.

In my childhood, we drove everywhere - vacations, moving cross country to escape death threats, traveling to visit distant relatives, moving back cross country after my father died.
And the one constant was the road trip cooler. Stuffed with soda, snacks, bread, and lunch meat, that thing got toppedd up with ice at every hotel.

And as an adult, I don’t really do that sort of travel anymore, but as others have said - for chilling drinks and what-not. (But never for putting into drinks.)

I’ve been working for years to get my fire dispensers into hotels but the useless ice dispenser lobby keeps blocking me.