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"No smoking" Lamp is Lit 

The Marriott and Westin chain seem to have started the anti-smoking fervor. But entire cities such as Chicago and Washington followed, along with more than 100 other municipalities that also enacted smoke-free laws.

Marriott banned smoking last year in all its 400,000 guest rooms, as well as restaurants, lounges, meeting rooms, public spaces and work areas.

But the chain went even farther. Marriott provides free anti-smoking packages to all its employees and their dependents who participate in a medical plan. The chain in partnership with the American Cancer Society also offers 24-hour "quitline" telephone counseling and two eight-week non-prescription nicotine replacement therapy treatments each year.

You might think the smoking policy there was based on the bottom line but Marriott says that is not the case.

"We weren't focused on ROI. It was more of 'This is the right thing to do for our guests and associates,'" says Karen Graham, Marriott's manager of health plans. . . .

Not all hotels are adopting non-smoking laws.

"Representatives from InterContinental Hotels Group, Hilton and Hyatt said they have no plans to eliminate smoking rooms throughout their chains, though these rooms represent as little as one percent of inventory," reported The New York Times a few weeks ago.

So if you want to smoke, here's a RX: go to Eastern Europe. The Romanian Tourist Office at its site points out that recent legislation banned smoking everywhere such as planes, buses and some trains. "Luxury hotels have designated no-smoking floors," the Romanian Tourist Office says.

But so what? The site admits that it looks like all adults in Romania smoke. "But smokers here, in common with many Eastern European countries," have little respect for non-smokers."

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[S]mokers here, in common with many Eastern European countries, have little respect for non-smokers.
Romanian Tourist Office, on its website.