By Mark Bedard
Anyone who has lived through a late hotel arrival with an early wake-up call the next morning knows how much Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) can affect your sleep experience. In fact, a J.D. Power study revealed guests who experienced better-than-expected sleep reported satisfaction scores 114 points higher (on a 1,000-point scale) than those with average sleep experiences. A guest’s sleep can be disturbed by the smallest disruption, from sounds in the hotel hallway to the scent of a room. Even slight odors, musty smells or smoking remnants can be enough to sour a guest’s mood and potentially their sleep.
Nor are all smells innocuous. One errant cigarette in a non-smoking room can linger for weeks, and guests will notice. A 2024 study titled “Unraveling the Impact of Travel on Circadian Rhythm and Crafting Optimal Management Approaches,” found that travelers who suffer one night of disrupted sleep take on average five days to fully regain lost sleep. Guests suffering from breathing conditions such as asthma have even longer recovery periods. Another study found that 77% of consumers would consider a hotel’s air quality when deciding where to stay. It’s clear to travelers how important IAQ is, but it isn’t always easy for hoteliers to spot negative odors or undertake appropriate remediation.
Here are five ways hoteliers can “clear the air” in and around their guestrooms:
Monitor guestroom air quality
All hotels promise travelers access to non-smoking rooms, but it can be difficult for hoteliers to ensure guests comply with their policies and even more challenging to confront them when suspected of smoking in the room. When a smoking event does occur in a non-smoking room, the guestroom often must be taken offline for deep cleaning until the smell normalizes. This can have a significant impact on the guest experience if underreported and can hamper a hotel’s revenue-earning potential as well.
Hotels should investigate ways to monitor or track odors in the guestroom to understand what is causing them, and how to mitigate them. New and effective sensor technology exists to do just that. Sometimes, odors can be difficult to isolate without taking time to track down their source. This includes difficult-to-see mildew or other scents that can strengthen over time.
Additionally, casino hotels, resorts and other properties which offer both smoking and non-smoking rooms should update their signage to ensure guests know what type of room they are in and what is permitted at all times. And with proliferation of marijuana legalization and the corresponding increases in usage, tight and effective monitoring protocols are more important than ever.
Understand how your hotel’s mechanical systems impact indoor air quality
Hotels are commercial buildings made of many parts, and these parts contribute to the scent profile of the property. Hotel owners should consider the value of inspecting and servicing their PTAC and HVAC units not only to improve their operating efficiency, but also to mitigate any mildew or mold that can contribute to negative air quality and noticeable odors.
Monitoring tools are now also available to help track HVAC system performance and automatically flag hoteliers of changes in baseline temperature and humidity. Hotels should also consider the impact of on-property renovations or nearby construction projects and how that may impact air quality.
Moderate use of cleaning materials
As an extension of tracking your hotel’s mechanical scent profile, hoteliers should moderate the use of harsh cleaning materials in guestrooms and public areas. Not only do many cleaning chemicals release high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that have a toxic effect on worker and guest health in large quantities, they also sometimes also emit persistent, unpleasant odors that are trapped and confined in guestrooms.
Hotel owners take cleanliness seriously, and no one is asking them to clean properties less, but the components of these chemicals can turn a clean room into an unpleasant or even hazardous environment. Operators should ensure their staff and team leaders understand the role of cleaning chemicals, use these materials properly, consider alternative products and take steps to avoid impacting the guest experience via “over-sanitation.”
Track the guest experience
Hotel leaders rarely have the time to visit each guestroom, particularly at large properties or in busy markets. As such, it can be easy for IAQ to degrade in a guestroom without operators finding out until a negative review appears online. These reviews provide vital information hoteliers can use to improve the experience for the next guest and must be taken seriously.
Are guests discussing the IAQ of your property or its scent profile in online reviews? What words are they using, and what specific comments are they making? What odors consistently come up as part of these discussions? These are your guests’ pain points, and tracking their feedback can help identify and remediate the negative odors impacting your guest experience.
Consider personalizing clean air in the booking path
There are now ways to turn a negative—the presence of problematic air quality at some hotels—into a positive by selling the clean air your property ensures as a bookable enhancement.
With the right tracking systems in place to ensure an odor-free experience every time, guaranteed “clean air rooms” can be sold at a premium. Hotels across segments have begun doing so, which has proven to be a high-margin revenue enhancement that generates significant upside. Hotels, like airlines, are beginning to monetize individual elements of a guest experience, and clean air should be one of them. It’s a part of the broader personalization story taking place throughout the travel industry, and guaranteed IAQ in hotels is quickly joining the ranks of other attributes guests will pay for.
The next breath
Monitoring systems, filtration units and historical data management are helping hotels provide optimized experiences across every corner of the stay experience. In a world riddled with pandemics and wildfires, we are much more aware of the quality of the air we breathe—inside and outside. IAQ is an increasingly desirable asset for all travelers and can benefit guests and hoteliers equally.
Mark Bedard is VP, marketing and go-to-market at FreshAir Sensor. With more than 20 years of experience in technology marketing, he specializes in aligning product innovation with customer needs, driving brand growth and translating complex tech into compelling, actionable messaging.
