Budapest's first smokeless hotel open for business

Someday soon, it will be impossible to contemplate smoking in a public place, much less leaving the smell of stale smoke behind for the next guests to check into your hotel room. Hungary is some years behind in the global smoking clampdown, but the Accor-Pannonia hotel group has made a significant step in the right direction by prohibiting smoking on the entire territory of its Ibis Budapest Emke Hotel.

Hotel management is not worried about losing costumers, Accor-Pannonia Marketing Director Zoltán Király told mfor.hu. The conversion was preceded by a long planning process, including a poll of guests and dry-cleaning of curtains, carpets, pillows and blankets, as well as scrubbing all rooms from floor to ceiling. In addition, as the prohibition applies to employees as well, they were asked to attend an extensive, four-month training course.

Emke Director Zsuzsanna Réger also believes that a drop in the number of guests will not happen in the long run. During her visit to the director of the Ibis Wien Schönbrunn Strasse hotel in Austria, which went no-smoking last summer, she learned that while traffic drops somewhat after the new regulation is introduced, non-smokers later make up for the loss.

Király added that data on hotel reservations clearly show a growing demand for smoke-free accommodation, as well as a growing number of wellness tourists. For this reason, the Accor group has introduced the non-smoking policy in ten European Ibis hotels, including Emke.

Andrea Kopócsy, president of the Hungarian Hotel Association (Magyar Szállodaszövetség), believes this trend will soon become the norm. She also believes more and more tourists will choose smoke-free accommodation, even if they otherwise smoke.

• Email
• Save to My Caboodle