Provincial and municipal smoking bans are a concern to rural hotels and bars, say industry representatives.
“My membership is very solidly opposed” to a smoking ban, said Jim Hansen, president of the Alberta Hotel and Lodging Association.
He estimated 40 percent of his 500 members are rural hotels, bars and restaurants.
It’s the same among the 300 rural members of the Hotels Association of Saskatchewan, said executive vice-president Tom Mullin.
“The majority of our membership did a survey and 60-70 percent of their customers smoke.”
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He said his members are concerned about losing business because bars and coffee shops are among few places in rural Saskatchewan where people can meet and talk. If smoking is banned in such places, as is proposed by the province for next year, then customers will buy their liquor but drink at home, he added.
Mullin said rural Saskatchewan is already losing people and his members feel besieged by increased liquor taxes, the loss of off-sale liquor discounts and a potential smoking ban.
“Smoking, gaming and liquor go together and that’s the basis of a number of our rural hotels.”
Heidi Howarth, chair of the Manitoba Hotels Association, manages the Trails West Motor Inn in Brandon. The city has banned smoking for the past year.
“I’ve lost $300,000 just on bar sales alone,” she said, adding that business won’t return because her former customers, 85 percent of whom smoke, changed their lifestyle and stay at home to smoke and drink.
Action at the video lottery terminals has also dropped and Howarth said the Winnipeg casino, also under a smoking ban, has lost $1 million a week in business.
Howarth, who is a non-smoker, said the hospitality industry’s preference is not a total ban but a partial one using enclosed smoking rooms or designated smoking areas and powerful ventilation systems to remove smoke from the bar.
“A smoking room gives people choices,” she said.
That is what was done in British Columbia where a smoking ban went into effect last year. Some bars went for the total ban, some closed their doors and others spent the $700 per head the industry estimates it costs for segregated areas and good ventilation.
However, those who are pushing for a provincial smoking ban in Saskatchewan say the ventilation doesn’t work.
“The current technology does no more than give a false sense,” said Mary Smillie of Bladworth, Sask., with the provincial antismoking coalition.
“It reduces the smell a bit.”
Donna Pasiechnik of the Saskatchewan office of the Canadian Cancer Society said designated smoking rooms don’t work in the jurisdictions that have tried them.
“Quite often the ventilation is turned off. It is costly to operate, costly to inspect and enforce and costly for bars to maintain, too.”
She said rural bars concerned about losing customers should appeal to the 75 percent of the province’s population who don’t smoke.
“People don’t go to bars to smoke. People go to bars and restaurants to socialize,” Pasiechnik said.
In Manitoba, Howarth said the total smoking ban came as a surprise.
“A poll we did indicated people felt they went too far.”
She said the hotel industry is not promoting smoking as a lifestyle.
“I think it’s a courtesy thing. You shouldn’t have people standing out in the freezing rain or snow so they can smoke. “It is an addiction.”
