Smokers Hit Hard with Cleaning Fees in Hawaii Hotels

The Honolulu Advertiser is reporting that smokers who puff away in non-smoking hotel rooms may be faced with a hefty cleaning bill that could be as high as $500, a fine one smoker was hit with when he broke the rules in the Aqua Palms & Spa, a property in Waikiki.

On average, the fee for cleaning a non-smoking is $150 to $300. The cleaning fee pays to shampoo carpets, clean drapes and bedspreads and to banish the smell of smoke in the room. Aqua’s $500 fee is meant as a strong deterrent to the behavior, and the larger fee seems to be working in most cases.

Smoking policies of hotels is a rapidly changing area of hotel policy and most travelers are non-smokers. A number of hotel chains have designated all their properties smoke-free. As of 2006, Marriott lodging properties in the U.S. and Canada became 100 percent smoke-free; and Hawaii-based Outrigger Hotels and Resorts and its Ohana properties have all been smoke-free since 2006. Outrigger reports that in the chain's 3,000 to 4,000 Waikiki rooms, there are usually two incidents of smoking violations a week.