When I first started Green Lodging News, there were still many in our industry who supported keeping a percentage of their rooms as smoking rooms. Many factors have led to the mass elimination of smoking rooms in the industry—consumer demand, legislative action, brand policies, etc. At The Hospitality Show in Las Vegas last month, there were many exhibitors of interest, including a couple of companies that make it easy to catch guests who violate nonsmoking policies. The two companies include alerteer and FreshAir Sensor LLC. The companies’ products function similarly.
In the case of alerteer, it provides a system of smart sensors that detect cigarette smoke, marijuana smoke and carbon monoxide. Once the smoke or abnormal amount of carbon monoxide is detected, an alert is sent in real time to the general manager or other person in charge so that the matter can be addressed immediately.
FreshAir Sensor’s Plug-In Smoking Detection Device uses PolySens technology to detect and prove smoking in unauthorized areas. PolySens technology immediately detects specific molecules in tobacco smoke and marijuana smoke. The sensors reset following smoking detection for continued monitoring.
The FreshAir Sensor plugs into a standard North American (Type B) outlet or is hardwired into a ceiling or wall. It connects via Wi-Fi to FreshAir’s cloud-based platform to monitor up to 500 square feet of open space per device. It notifies you immediately via email, computer desktop, and/or mobile phone push notification, and provides and logs timestamped charts of the incident data for scientific proof of smoking.
FreshAir is developing the next generation of its proprietary, polymer sensors to detect molecules released in e-cigarette vapor.
Keeping guestrooms smoke free is critical. Hotel room cleanliness and odors have the greatest negative impact on guest satisfaction. Of course, the cost of cleaning a smoked in room can easily be in the hundreds to thousands of dollars if all soft goods in a room are impacted. Even with extensive cleaning, you may not be able to remove all the chemical residue—even on hard goods thanks to third-hand smoke.
