If you check in to a smoke-free hotel, you are usually warned that you’d be fined for smoking in your room and even required to initial a written warning. It turns out, however, that you can easily get away with no charge unless a hotel employee catches you while smoking.
I stayed at one of those smoke-free hotels in Wichita, Kan., this week and initialed one of those pieces of paper saying the fine would be $250 if the smoking ban wasn’t observed. I’ve never smoked and am, in fact, allergic to smoke, so I was very happy with the policy. But as soon as I opened the door to my assigned room, the unpleasant smell hit me.
The only other available room was a penthouse-style suite, so I was of course happy to move. My first night was, indeed, smoke-free, but the following night things changed. I smelled cigarette smoke on the suite’s lower level, but the bedroom on the upper level seemed fine, so I didn’t complain to the hotel staff.
Big mistake. Early in the morning, I was awoken by that smell. I asked housekeeping to come and figure out the source of the smell, so I wouldn’t be charged the fine. They reported that the guest in the room below mine had been smoking. I said I hoped he’d be fined — only to be told that he’d just checked out, and they couldn’t fine him unless they had caught him in the act. “It’s my word against his,” the housekeeping supervisor said.
Had I complained the night before while he was smoking, things would have been different. That was the last time I hesitate before complaining in a hotel.
Tags: hotels, Kansas, smoking fines, Travel, Wichita
Thanks for the information on the no-smoking policy. It is good to know that we should complain in the middle of the night instead of waiting until morning.
I once stayed in a hotel “on the property” of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. Smoking is v.v. bad. I had to sign a document giving the hotel (and the Church) my permission to expel me at once if I smoked in the room. I didn’t.