Smoking is out at Hotel Providence

The Hotel Providence this month became the latest to follow the industry trend to ban smoking in guest rooms. For the boutique hotel, it was a decision based on demand and the well-being of guests but could also have a positive affect on business, said Gregory Stafford, who took the reins as general manager in March.
“Hotels like ours had already been whittling down the number of smoking rooms just based on the number of guests that actually request smoking accommodations,” he said recently of the decision to go smoke-free on April 1.
When Stafford began working at the hotel, the nonsmoking initiative was under way, but he said it’s a trend he’d seen in smaller Washington, D.C., hotels. At Hotel Providence, interest in smoking rooms had waned, leading the hotel to offer only 6 percent of its rooms for smokers, he said.
The decision likely won’t deter smokers from staying at Hotel Providence, the 80-room Westminster Street hotel that this year was ranked as the Ocean State’s best hotel by the Zagat’s 2008 Guide, but it might attract nonsmokers to the property, Stafford said. Boutique hotels aren’t alone in going smoke-free, “this is a trend that is widespread in the industry,” he said. “Most of the major chains have already made this transition.”
The first national chain to go smoke free was Westin Hotels & Resorts, which operates The Westin Providence. In January 2006, all of the Westin’s smoking rooms in its hotels in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean – a total of 3,900 rooms – went smoke-free, a $3 million investment, according to the company. That investment brought The American Heart Association back to the Westin as a contracted customer, according to Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., Westin’s parent company. The association previously hadn’t been a customer for five years, according to Starwood.
Stafford said there might be similar upsides to making Hotel Providence smoke-free. It’s a smart decision in the industry now because “the number of guests that we upset by not having smoking accommodations is relatively small compared to the number of guests that we upset by having smoking in the building,” he said.
Later in 2006, Westin hotels were followed by Marriott International Inc., which operates the Courtyard by Marriott, Marriott Providence and the new Renaissance Providence Hotel. On October 16 of that year, Marriott’s more than 2,300 properties in the United States and Canada went smoke-free, according to the company. The majority of guests had requested smoke-free rooms, and the “only way to provide this experience is to not allow smoking within the building,” according to Marriott’s Web site.
For boutique hotels, the cost of going smoke-free isn’t as much as a national chain. But the changeover is time consuming, because the former smoking rooms need to be extensively cleaned, said Stafford. “Pulling all of the linen and drapery and having that all dry cleaned – and, in some cases, stripping wallpaper – it’s a pretty big process,” he said. “To do that properly between guests is impossible.”
And the smell of smoke in some rooms is enough to keep even some smokers away, said Patrick O’Neil, operations manager with NYLO Hotels LLC. “They go in it and everything smells like smoke,” he said. “Nobody wants that. So smokers use nonsmoking rooms and what they do is go ahead and smoke.”
NYLO, founded in 2005, has a smoke-free policy, but if a customer wants to smoke, they’re going to do it, O’Neil said.
“So we’re going to fine them for it,” he added. That fine is steep: it’s about $250. That’s more than many of NYLO’s rooms, which range from $75 to about $340 a night at the NYLO in Plano, Texas. When NYLO opens a 163-room hotel in Warwick in July, it will be smoke-free.
NYLO took another step, too. The company has decided that a whole floor of each of its hotels will be a “pure floor,” offering guards against allergens. Those rooms have medical-grade air purifiers and annual “coating” by Pure Solutions North America, a Buffalo, N.Y.-based purifying firm, O’Neil said.
That’s an attempt to draw in some of the 70 million travelers that O’Neil estimates have allergies, and along with that initiative “nonsmoking seemed to make all the sense in the world; trying to be healthier and cater to today’s business traveler,” he said.
Along with going nonsmoking, Hotel Providence is also in the process of “repositioning” its restaurant in the marketplace, Stafford said. It was a space that had been leased by L’Epicureo, but a new restaurant, operated by the hotel, will open during May in its spot, Stafford said. It will be called Aspire. It hasn’t been decided whether there will be a smoking section at the restaurant, Stafford said. There is, however, a spot for hotel guests who smoke, he said. “We fortunately do have a courtyard adjacent to the hotel and for guests that feel the urge to smoke, we make it very easy for them to use that space.” •