Nicotine jitters: Another hotel chain goes non-smoking
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Nicotine addicts, be warned. Your hotel options are decreasing again.
First Westin went 100% nonsmoking worldwide in the US, Canada, the Caribbean, Scotland, Australia, and Fiji. Then Marriott went smoke-free across all its brands in North America. Now, Comfort Suites, part of the Choice Hotels group, is going smoke-free as well.
Already 10% of the chain’s hotels are non-smoking. The remainder of the properties will ban smoking by the end of April.
Comfort Suites will still offer a designated smoking area somewhere on the property, so smokers won’t be as shut out as they might be at other hotel chains.
It’s interesting that Choice Hotels is opting to go non-smoking in this particular brand alone. (Econolodge might have been an even bigger surprise…) Comfort isn’t their top tier, and it’s not a newly launched brand like Cambria, where they’d be starting from scratch.
Update 2/21/07: Reader Alex writes in to correct a small but important error in the description of Westin’s smoke-free policy. It’s not worldwide: “Westin did not go smoke-free worldwide. I know this is true since I’m currently in the Westin Bangkok and enjoying a quick puff in the bar. (sorry 
)” Heh. You’re right, Alex. I’ve corrected the post above to reflect the policy, as stated on Westin’s website: No smoking at hotels in the US, Canada, the Caribbean, Scotland (not even all of the UK!), Australia, and Fiji.
Related:
- Marriott hotels to eliminate smoking in all its North American brands
- Smoking prohibitions: Hurdles and tradeoffs
- The captain has turned on the smoke-’em-if-you-got-’em sign…
- Smoking chimpanzee can’t kick cigarette habit (CBS News)
- Comfort Suites (aff)
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February 18th, 2007 at 10:18 pm |
An increasing proportion of Hilton chain hotels in the US are non-smoking. I come across new ones converting to non-smoking virtually every week. The way the trend is going I figure it is only a matter of time before the hotel by hotel choice of allowing or disallowing smoking will be replaced by the chain going smokefree.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:00 pm |
We do feature a few Hilton branded hotels which include Hilton, Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Homewood Suites and Hampton Inns on FreshStay at www.FreshStay.com
We recently heard from an Embassy Suites General Manager that Hilton had asked them to add more Smoking rooms to their inventory.
It is probably safe to say that there is no consensus among Hilton branded properties regarding this topic.
We have been following this trend for 25 years when Holiday Inns mandated that 10% of the rooms be NON SMOKING.
It is probably quite safe to say that it is most likely that additional chains will become 100% non smoking in the near future.
We would encourage prospective guests to vote with their reservations. Stay at a 100% non smoking hotel and leave a comment card for the General Manager applauding their decision.
October 6th, 2007 at 11:20 pm |
It is very very wrong to attempt to stop people from smoking in the privacy of their hotel rooms.