Westin Hotels Goes Smokefree

Upscale chain brings clean air to all of its 77 properties

Parts excerpted from USA Today, 12/4/05

The new year will ring in the USA's first smoke-free major hotel chain.

Westin Hotels & Resorts will announce today that it is snuffing out smoking in all rooms, restaurants, bars and public areas at its 77 U.S., Canadian, and Caribbean properties starting in January. Guests may smoke only in outdoor areas.

The policy reflects "a demand from guests for a smoke-free hotel experience," says Sue Brush, Westin senior vice president. "Nobody likes to walk into a smoky guest room — not even smokers." Westin research shows that 92% of its guests request a smoke-free room.

The no-smoking trend — evident in the growing number of city and state ordinances clearing the air in offices, bars, and restaurants — is prompting more hotels to go smoke-free:

• Six Westins currently forbid smoking.
• The Comfort Inn in New York City's Times Square went smokefree three years ago. Occupancy rates have set records, with the hotel almost always being fully occupied.
• About 80% of California's Joie de Vivre boutique-hotel chain (28 total properties) are now smoke-free.
• All five properties in California's Woodside Hotels & Resorts group, including the Napa Valley Lodge, have banned smoking since 2000.

In 2004, the Topaz Hotel in Washington, D.C., became the first lodging in the Kimpton chain to provide only smokefree guest rooms. The number of smokers who gripe when put in a non-smoking room is "small compared to the number of people who were complaining about being put in a smoking room" when the hotel was fully booked, says Topaz general manager David Hill. "It's a huge weight off the shoulders of our (customer) service staff. I will never go back."

No-smoking rooms also need less cleaning and repair of burned furnishings. To prepare for the new era, Westin's 2,400 U.S., Canadian and Caribbean smoking rooms will be deep-cleaned and get new air filters.

For a big chain to make such a major policy shift is "very cutting-edge," American Hotel & Lodging Association President Joseph McInerney said in a statement. "The industry is sure to take notice."

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