Joe Buser is having a busy summer.
His Littleton-based company specializes in cleaning and deodorizing hotel rooms, and business is booming. Requests to turn smoking rooms into smoke-free rooms have grown from 10 to 80 a month.
Buser is on the receiving end of a national trend toward smoke-free hotel rooms and public facilities.
Westin Hotels & Resorts in January became the first U.S. chain to go 100 percent smoke-free. Marriott International followed that lead, announcing Wednesday that all of its 2,300 North American hotels would go smoke- free, starting in September.
The hotel chains took these moves voluntarily, citing declining demand for smoking rooms nationwide.
In Colorado, the statewide smoking ban enacted in March accelerated the trend. The law required that 75 percent of all Colorado hotel rooms be smoke-free by July 1, along with all lobbies, reception areas and common areas, such as pools.
“Every property has an issue with smoke,” said Buser, who owns the Colorado franchise of a company called National Appeal. “When I call people now, they listen to what I have to say.”
For instance, the 118-room Fortune Valley Hotel & Casino in Central City had to convert 30 of its rooms to comply with the new law. The process took three weeks.
“It was costly,” said spokesman Joe Behm. “With only 118 rooms and a busy casino, taking those rooms off the market posed a bit of a hardship.”
The Westin, meanwhile, said it went smoke-free after a survey found that 92 percent of its guests were already asking for nonsmoking rooms.
Buser handled the work for Westin’s two Colorado properties, cleaning more than 40 rooms at the chain’s Westminster and Tabor Center hotels. The cleanup cost a total of about $200 per room.
“Even a lot of our smoking guests were requesting nonsmoking rooms,” John Panko, director of sales and marketing at the Westin Westminster.
Marriott, in its announcement this week, also noted declining demand for smoking rooms. And it emphasized health concerns, including new warnings from the U.S. surgeon general on the hazards of secondhand smoke.
Even before the chain’s national announcement, the 615-room Denver Marriott City Center had downsized its number of smoking rooms from 156 in 2000 to 39 rooms.
It’s worth it, said hotel general manager Patti O’Keefe, because “a nonsmoker getting a smoking room is like a death wish for a hotel.”
At Denver’s Brown Palace, only 15 of the 241 rooms are reserved for smokers. The 1,225- room Adam’s Mark Hotel has just 86.
“Twenty years ago, hotels as a group decided to make half their rooms nonsmoking,” said Adam’s Mark general manager Chuck Freije. “That pool keeps getting bigger and bigger based on customer requests. I don’t think anybody is too surprised by it anymore.”
These trends have helped grow Buser’s business by 25 percent a year since he bought it in 2000, he said. He works with more than 120 Colorado hotels and charges an average of $75 to de-smoke a room.
In addition to cleaning the carpet, bedding, draperies and walls, National Appeal uses a patented chemical product to purify the air.
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-820-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
