May 29th, 2008 08:29

Websites are a good place to seek smoke-free hotels

An increasing number of smoke-free hotels can be found in North America. But hotels in Europe and Asia often seem like late-night room service when it comes to kicking the tobacco habit.

Thanks to tough national and local smoking laws overseas, hotel operators desire to cut the costs of eliminating smells, stains and burns from their properties.

French hotels are considered to be the most popular hotels. But after an investigation, anti-smoking researchers showed that 78% of French hotel guests told that they prefer non-smoking rooms.

Now travelers have the possibility to seek smoke-free hotels via Web sites. The Web sites are a good place to start searching, particularly for travelers who belong to Marriott or Starwood loyalty programs and want to stay with familiar hoteliers abroad.

Details and nuances of smoking policies can differ widely. One hotel will ban smoking in public areas like meeting rooms and the lobby, but allowing guests to smoke in their rooms. Other hotels prohibit smoking in some floors as nonsmoking, but permit smoking on other floors. Also, all the smoking floors are joined by a separate ventilation system.

The tobacco industry often claims that ventilation systems can remove smoke from the air. But they can't. Ventilation may remove the smell of smoke but not the dangers. Ventilation systems are no solution for secondhand smoke. And separate smoking areas don't work either, because the smoke drifts.

The British Isles are an increasingly fertile ground for smoke-free hotels. In large part, this is due to the new smoking-control laws in Ireland and the U.K.

"Hotels can still designate a number of their rooms for smokers. Non-smoking rooms are widely available too,'' said Andrew Weir, a spokesman for Visit Britain, the public agency that promotes tourism in Britain.

Britain also abounds with country-specific sites that support smoking restrictions and quit-smoking programs. These sites include information on hotel smoking policies in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

From all the world, Asia is a tougher sell for non-smoking policies, though it is changing too, with growing restrictions on smoking spilling over into hotels.

Thailand is the home of the voluntary project called the Smoke-Free Hotel Program, launched in 2006 and partly supported by the nonprofit Green Leaf Program and the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Formed to encourage hotels to set aside smoke-free rooms, this modest beginning effort enlists 17 hotels and resorts.