The decision to ban smoking in hotel rooms was not one that was taken lightly...

Travelodge has recently announced that it will become the first United Kingdom hotel chain to become 100 percent smoke free. This means that in all parts of the hotel including private rooms smoking will not be allowed in the Travelodge chain. The ban will not come into force until the January 2008 that is six months after the ban on smoking in all public places was enforced.

The decision to ban smoking in hotel rooms was not one that was taken lightly and it was only in response to numerous customer surveys as well as staff feedback that the management of Travelodge decided to take the plunge and go ahead. For example they found that over 90% of people who did not smoke were in favour of a complete ban of smoking in public places and almost 60 percent of smokers said that they were happy not to smoke in public places.

Seventy five percent of non-smokers noted that they would rather be in a hotel that was completely non-smoking and this was the statistic that convinced the Travelodge management to go ahead with the complete smoking ban. They also took into account that only twelve percent of people who stay in their hotels actually smoke and since many of these smokers were in favour of hotels being completely smoke free there was only a very small proportion of people to worry about.

The over six and a half million people stay at Travelodges throughout the United Kingdom every year and the business owns 318 hotels nationwide. Any new Travelodge being built as from the first of July 2007 will become immediately 100 percent non-smoking including all bedrooms. Ukmedix News welcome this initiative shown by the Travelodge hotel chain and hopes that other hotels around the United Kingdom will soon follow suit.