Clean Air at Night

Abstract

Given some hotel guests' rising concern about secondary smoke, hotel chains have set aside a percentage of so-called non-smoking hotel rooms. However, a survey of 20 U.S.-based chains found that only one actually keeps reservation statistics about smoking-room requests and refusals. Most chains mandate a minimum percentage of non-smoking rooms in their properties, but leave it up to the local managers to determine the actual percentage. Also left to the local property is mollifying the guest who has been promised a smoking or non-smoking room but finds none available at check-in. A survey of 364 individual hotels found an average of 55 percent of rooms set aside for non-smokers' use. However, about two-thirds of the hotels would put a smoker in a non-smoking room, if smoking rooms were all full. A survey of 917 travelers found that frequent business travelers are more likely to be non-smokers than smokers, and those frequent travelers are most likely to make a specific room request. Nearly three-quarters of non-smokers said they always state their room preference, while not even half of smokers always did so. Moreover, the availability of non-smoking rooms was important in the selection of a hotel for over 80 percent of the non-smoking respondents. Half of the respondents said they would be unlikely to do business again with a hotel that fails to fulfill their request for a non-smoking room.