Welcome to Little Britain (1)
Thursday, April 10, 2008 A reader writes:
Last Friday I went to Birmingham on a business trip. I booked a room in a hotel where I could smoke and my reservation was made at the end of October, months in advance. On the Friday evening I was shown to my room.
I lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray. As I couldn't find one I used a glass in the room. I then called room service for some food. When the waiter arrived, he pointed at me and screamed "That's illegal" and ran down to reception to report me to the duty manager.Just as I started to eat the duty manager phoned my room and gave me what can only be described as a tirade of abuse due to the fact that I was in a non-smoking room. I pointed out that it was their mistake as I had booked a smoking room but she continued with some outrageous accusations: (1) I had done it on purpose knowing that it was a non-smoking room; (2) I had used a glass that would have to be "decontaminated" and I would have to pay for it; (3) the room would have to be fumigated immediately and I would have to pay for it; (4) I could not stay there and would have to be moved to another room.
I agreed to move to a smoking room but I told her that I refused to pay a fine as the mistake was made by them. She then said that smoking rooms could not always be supplied and I pointed out that five months' notice should be sufficient to secure one. If I had known it was only provisional I would have gone elsewhere.
When I went to pay my bill on Sunday a £50 charge had been added for fumigation. After a lengthy dispute with the manager I managed to get the fee cancelled. I can only say that I was shocked by the treatment I received from both the waiter and particularly the duty manager who by her tone almost implied that what I was doing was as bad as taking illegal drugs on the premises.
I will be writing to the general manager to complain further about this but thought you might be interested in my experience.
Welcome to Britain. Little Britain.
Simon Clark
Several people have asked me to name the hotel. I'm not going to because I have received a further email (see below) from the guest in question and although the situation was very badly handled, I don't think it would be right to "name and shame" a hotel that, unlike many others, still accommodates smokers, albeit in a rather cack-handed fashion. The latest email reads:
Thanks very much for posting my experience on your site. It's good to have a bit of support from the people who have commented. The smoking ban has the effect of making us feel alienated from the rest of society, something I find very depressing. To be honest I don't like smoking in a bedroom. In the good old days before the ban I would simply have had a couple of cigarettes in the bar and then gone up to my room, but what can you do?
I booked a smoking room so that I did not have to travel many floors down in a lift and fight my way outside to have a cigarette in the cold. I think the mistake was made by the desk clerk who upgraded my room but didn't check whether I wanted smoking or non-smoking. Obviously if you smoke you cannot expect to have the nicest rooms anymore. They had one floor of the hotel dedicated to smoking rooms and the standard was not as good as elsewhere in the hotel.
What is interesting is the fact that the smoking rooms appear to be inferior to the non-smoking rooms. My correspondent's original email referred to one she was eventually given as "smelly". Non-smokers may laugh and say, what do you expect? But I was given a smoking room in a London hotel recently and I would never have known - and I'm a non-smoker.
I'm no expert but, properly cleaned and ventilated (and with decent air conditioning), I see no reason why a smoking room shouldn't be as clean and fresh as a no-smoking room. If hotels want the business, it will pay them to make the effort - unless, of course, they intend to introduce, voluntarily, a "level playing field" (ie a ban on smoking in all hotel bedrooms).
For the moment my advice is to write and thank any hotel that provides bedrooms where you can smoke (ie be positive not negative). If you have a complaint, be polite and constructive. Save your anger for those hotels where smoking is completely verboten. They're the real enemy.
Simon Clark
I'm not going to name the hotel but I will say this. By coincidence, it just happens to be the same hotel we were planning to stay at during the Conservative party conference in September!
Reader Comments (11)
My God!!! I hope that the lady in question not only complains to the general manager but to the managing director if the hotel is part of a group. I hope that she demands
a) a full apology, not only from the company, but from the staff concerned
b) a refund
c) an assurance that the staff will be receive training in the legalities of the smoking ban and in customer service
Personally I would like to see disciplinary action taken against the members of staff in question and would also write to the company's HR department.
I hope that, if her demands are refused, she publicises her experience (with details of the offending hotel/group) as widely as possible through pro-choice sites, the appropriate trade body, the trade press and tourism agencies.
If her demands are met, I hope that she still publicises her experience, albeit without revealing the identity of the hotel.
I've just realised that I presumed that the person in question is female - my apologies.
The name of this hotel or hotel group should be made known Simon, so we can avoid spending money with companies whose policies are clearly anti-smoker.
If the majority of smokers take the economic boycott stance of not going to a pub or restaurant for just one month, then the politicians would certainly come under pressure to amend this ludicrous smoking ban.
However, this to some degree is already happening with 4 pubs per day closing and our illustrious politicians do not give a damn.
A hotel staffed with screaming lunatics. Yes, please let us know the name of the hotel for who in their right mind would want to go there.
But wait... This is New Labour's Britain; so those staff probably WERE all lunatics being rehabilitated!
I would let the hotel be named and shamed, this government has turned people against smokers and i absoloutley hate them for it.They dont care about car fumes and americas rocket fumes that give out more polution then any cigarette can. I think we have a bunch of bloody looneys in government, i will never vote labour again ever, they have no common sense whats so ever my dog has more brains then them. They are a bunch of hysterical hypocritical greedy morons that has nothing better to do then persecute smokers, what a bloody sad life they all live at our expense.There is one politician that has any balls to stick his neck out and stand up for the smokers rights, they are looking after their own interests. Probably fightened to lose their cushy little job no doubt. There is only one difference between magabee and brown and that is magabee was elected.This country has so many problems and these brain dead politicians havent got a clue how to solve the problems we have, so they have to justify their huge salaries by seeming to be doing something positive so they keep on persecuting smokers. The only thing politicians know is tax tax tax and ban ban ban i am sure if someone was a good song writer this would make a very good song title.If anyone is thinking of voting tory then im afraid you will be voting for more of the same, vote UKIP they will give proprietors choice and choice is better then an outright ban.So name and shame the hotel they were wrong the fault lies with this lousey government for creating this situation.
Please name the hotel.
That is truly an outragous experience that happened to that hotel guest. I think the hotel should be named so that other smokers wont fall into the trap. On the odd occasion that I have been given a non smoking room in hotels without apology or notice, I dampen some toilet paper and put in into the glass, smoke to my hearts content and dump it in the waste basket. I havent ever come up against hotel staff examining the rubbish yet or accusing me of smoking but if I did I would ask them to prove it.
Yes Please name the hotel. I will go there and smoke my socks off! If they complain I will plaster them all over the papers.
I had an awful experience at the Crowne Plaza in Chester last year where the smoking room I was allocated (for £175, I might add) smelled so vile, I had to get up in the middle of the night and wander around Chester to get some fresh air.
As Simon mentioned, I too have stayed in smoking rooms all over the world that you wouldn't have known were smoking rooms, or have just a faint whiff.
This one, however, just reeked as if the bedding and soft furnishing hadn't been cleaned for about a decade. Perhaps it hadn't. Leaving the window open all day and night made no impact whatsoever. Bizzarely, when I complained, the staff insisted they couldn't smell anything in the room, although they said the corridoor did smell strongly of smoke. I think to be honest, the attitude was probably, well you're a smoker, you deserve no better.
Ironically, I hadn't asked for a smoking room and didn't smoke in the room myself.
Assuming that the Duty Manager's reaction was accurately reported, it's interesting to note her pious suggestion that the room would have to be FUMIGATED.
According to my dictionary, the verb 'fumigate' means "To expose to smoke, vapour, or fumes...".
I thought that's precisely what HAD happened - courtesy of the Lady Smoker.
Such ironies tend to be lost on Little People With Power - sad, humourless, little bigots, most of them, - and our beautiful country is drowning under the sheer weight of their numbers these days.
This is the worst country and it is really getting a lot worse. But all smokers are you aware that they have brought out a supersmoker?but its pricey or one can get them through e-cig take a look. It might bring us smokers back into pubs etc. But talking of Hotels I always phone in advance and double check to see if theyhave a smokers room, Most hotels have got rooms for us smokers. We also take a tin of spray around with us.An Air Freshener. as the staff are NOT allowed into that room for well over 1 hour. This country is a real nanny state.