Bill Marriott has a blog now. In a post titled “Not Blowing Any Smoke” he writes about a decision to make all North American Marriott hotels smoke-free. At the end of the post he writes:

… more than 90 percent of Marriott rooms were already non-smoking, but we still had a lot of complaints from our guests about the lingering smell of smoke; more than we had requests for smoking rooms. All over America local jurisdictions are coming to the same conclusion we came to. They’re banning smoking in restaurants, bars, and public spaces. The bottom line is: it’s working for Marriott. Complaints from guests about second hand smoke have dropped 50 percent. We do a guest satisfaction study with our guests and find that our ratings have jumped very, very high on the “Room Smells Fresh and Clean” category. Some people argued that we should ban smoking in the public areas and not in the rooms, but that won’t work. We know that the rooms really do smell bad when people smoke in them, and it’s very hard to get the smell out. So we made what we think is the right decision, the best decision we could make to keep Marriott on the move.

It’s interesting to read the comments that follow the post. Some customers complain bitterly while others praise the decision. While I have no problem with the decision that’s been made, smoking just doesn’t bother me so much.

However, when I think about Bill Marriott being a famous Mormon and Marriott hotels holding to or contradicting LDS standards, the most striking offense is that many Marriott hotels offer pay-per-view pornography in their rooms. I’d be much more impressed to hear that Marriott hotels got rid of this latter option.

To be honest, I haven’t stayed in a Marriott hotel in years. So if my impression is incorrect, I’d be happy to find out that I’m wrong about this.