Posted on 09/18/2003 12:45:25 PM PDT by hoosierskypilot
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - From New York to California, small and mid-size hotels have gone smoke-free, cleaning, deodorizing and redecorating rooms once reserved for smokers and designating them nonsmoking.
One major reason is that fewer guests are requesting smoking rooms. But hotel managers point to other benefits: lower room maintenance costs and a marketing tool at a time when the business has been hurt by a sluggish economy.
"In all of our publications, we promote a smoke-free environment, and we've gotten calls because of it. Families with kids, it's attractive to them. It reinforces cleanliness and safety," said Chris Canavos, manager of the 98-room Howard Johnson's in Williamsburg, Va., which went smoke-free during a renovation three years ago.
In New York City, which banned smoking in restaurants and bars over the summer, the 79-room Comfort Inn Midtown in the theater district just marked its second smoke-free year. For the first seven months of this year, the Comfort Inn's occupancy rate has been a strong 96 percent.
Nonsmoker Leon Der Bogosian, a jewelry wholesaler from Los Angeles who frequently travels on business, stays at the Comfort Inn Midtown an average of eight times a year. Of the smoke-free policy, he said: "I'm bound to them because of that."
"Clean air, that's the main thing for me," he said. When he recently stayed in Detroit, his nonsmoking room was on a floor with smoking rooms, and "from the elevator to the room, you could smell cigarettes."
Vijay Dandapani, chief operating officer of Apple Core Hotels, which runs the Comfort Inn Midtown, said that on average, maids have to spend an extra five minutes cleaning a smoking room, including emptying the ashtrays and scrubbing the smoke residue that settles on everything.
Moreover, hotel managers point out, the drapes, the carpets, the bedding and other furnishings need to be replaced more frequently in smoking rooms, because smokers burn holes in the furniture and cause other damage.
The switchover to no smoking also gives hotels more flexibility: Normally, when hotels are close to full, nonsmoking guests are offered smoking rooms. To many nonsmokers, that stinks. They are repelled by the hard-to-remove cigarette smell.
Many bars, restaurants and workplaces across the country have gone smoke-free over the past several years. John Banzhaf, an anti-smoking activist and professor of public interest law at George Washington University, calls hotels one of the last holdouts.
"I definitely think it will be a continuing and accelerating trend," he said. "I think hotels will try to distinguish themselves and try to provide some added value for their guests, and they'll be successful at it."
According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study of major U.S. urban markets, rooms for smokers account for 16 percent of all hotel rooms, a drop of 4 percentage points over the past five years.
In addition to New Jersey, New York and Virginia, smoke-free hotels can also be found in Delaware, California and Oklahoma, said Jeff Higley, editor in chief of the industry journal Hotel & Motel Management. There are an estimated 4.4 million hotel rooms in the United States.
Just over a month ago in Basking Ridge, about a half-hour drive west of New York City, the 171-room North Maple Inn dropped the last of its rooms for smokers. The North Maple, which caters to Fortune 500 travelers and wedding parties, now charges a $250 cleaning fee to guests who light up in their rooms - the amount the hotel says it costs to get rid of the smell.
Smokers at the North Maple are free to use five outdoor areas, including a courtyard where they can order drinks.
Some North Maple guests attending a recent corporate conference huddled outside a side entrance, chatting over a morning cigarette.
New Yorker Jonathan Smith said the policy was most bothersome just before bedtime and first thing in the morning. After putting up with the policy for three days, the 27-year smoker said: "I feel like I've been here my whole life."
Audrey Silk of the New York group Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment does not welcome the trend either: "A hotel is where you go to relax. If they're telling me I can't smoke in my room, that's not a vacation."
BS!
The appearance of that is being very well promoted, but fraudulently.
Last month I decided to visit Shelter Cove, a quaint and beautiful fishing village on the California coast which I had never visited.
It is unique in that the overpowering feature of the town is a paved airstip next to the actual coast, a golf course surrounds the airstrip.
I went on the net and identified the 8 possible places to stay. I called them all, and not only was I laughed at, but lectured for requesting a smoking room. Almost all.
It so happened that the last call, to Mario's Marina not only got me a smoking room, but the best location in town!
It is a working fishing town, and this was the spot where all the fishermen used. Gorgeous miles-long walking beach, all a long way from all the other "smoke free" so-called service businesses. We enjoyed the place so much we spent a couple of days longer than we planned to.
Oh yes, a couple of months ago, in San Francisco, we also got a smoking room at the Hyatt Regency. Say what?
A directory of real places, run by real people should be the first priority of smokers, to combat this self-fulfilling BS.
Judging by your sense of self-importance (to say nothing of your inability to figure out you could have gone elsewhere), I would say that you are probably immune to any toxic gases, including cyanide and carbon monoxide; perhaps even the noble gases, too.
The universe wouldn't dare!
Oh, and I can't agree with your utilitarian vison of govenrment, nor can I accept your rationalization of solving one socialist problem with another. I'm tempted to support banning the news media, since the government has created an entire class of citizens so poorly educated that they cannot recognize propoganda when they see it. But, that's kind of a silly proposition when I think about it.
It's $6.50 a can, here.
And I would agree that, in part, govt should be less intrusive. But the fact is that I pay for the health care for people who have willingly made themselves sick through self-destructive habits, when I can barely afford health care for myself.
So, that being the case, I'm all in favor of govt doing whatever it needs to wean addicts from nicotene.
In all fairness, though, the article points out that these businesses are going smoke-free of their own accord. Govt has not forced it.
A little sensitive, aren't we? You probably light up in close proximity to non-smokers just to show you won't be told what to do. Yellow fingers, yellow teeth and bad breath are no way to go through life, son.
Agreed, and I support private property rights fully.
Actually several studies have shown that the taxes smokers pay and their tendency to die earlier more than compensates for their medical care. Perhaps this is why it remains legal, unlike other far less hazardous drugs.
Really? Which "studies?"
this is why it remains legal
I would suggest that the tobacco lobbyists and the billions of $$ the tobacco industry spends in politics might be more accurate.
From Reason:
In fact, it increasingly looks like smokers are actually saving taxpayers money because they do not live as long as nonsmokers. In a 1994 paper, economist W. Kip Viscusi, then at Duke and now at Harvard, found that "the cost savings that results because of the premature deaths of smokers through their lower Social Security and pension costs will more than compensate for the added costs imposed by smokers....On balance there is a net cost savings to society."
Fair enough; add that you would permit "smoking only" facilities and your credibility is sealed.
I wish there were more ex-smokers like you.
Preoccupation with immortality is cool. Most people do it.
I should point out however, that of the 10 longest-lived persons documented, 9 smoked past age 100.
LOL.
You must have a smart dog!
Have him explain it to you:
It doesn't take a lit cigarette to set off the copernican controlling twits.
Yes, I make it a point to have an unlit cigarette in plain sight wherever I go, in close proximity to the neurotic controlling twits.
And yes, they have canniption fits.
Your dog can probably explain why. Assuming he is brave enough to go near you.
Sounds like you are advocating a law against farting. Figures.
The smell couldn't be worse than the stench of fascism.
Face it. Your days are numbered. We are going to tax you out of existence. We're going to make cigarettes so expensive you're going to have to buy them one at a time.
Then we're going to make it a crime to smoke anywhere anybody else is present.
The next step (and it will begin in Kalifornia) is that children will be encouraged to sue parents who smoke for damages.
BTW, I don't smoke.
Sad but true.
However, second hand smokeas a health issue, the basis for the intellectually-challenged who come out of the woodwork, has also been thoroughly debunked as fraud.
Accomodation for tiny people, always means "my way".
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