Bellagio goes "no smoking" gets pet friendly

[Alan Mendelson]

My new host at Bellagio called me this afternoon and during the conversation told me that the Bellagio HOTEL is now entirely NO SMOKING. And they are adding more pet friendly floors.

That's right NO more smoking in the hotel -- period.

Smoking continues in the casino though they can provide non-smoking tables if there is a non-smoking group at a table.

The no smoking policy at the Bellagio Hotel will also be tried at Aria soon.

They are adding pet friendly rooms because there has been a lot of demand for them.

[alpax]

For a minute I thought you meant the entire casino and not just the hotel. That would be a monumental risk by MGM, as the casino can easily fail without allowing smoking.

[Alan Mendelson]

I did ask if there might be entire non smoking sections in the casino and the answer was -- not yet. But some of the Indian casinos here in Southern Cal do have entire non smoking sections.

[Dan Druff]

I think this decision makes them more flexible with rooms, as few non-smokers are willing to take smoking rooms.

So if it's a big money period like New Year's, they can end up with rooms nobody wants (or have to sell at a discount) if they don't get enough smoking reservations.

I am wondering what they will do with the existing smoking rooms they just converted? Are those going to be the pet rooms?

[Alan Mendelson]

I think the former smoking rooms will just get a good cleaning and will become non-smoking rooms.

Any room could be a pet room.

At Caesars they limited the pet rooms to the lower floors so the dogs wouldn't have to be on the elevators for too long. After each guest visit the rooms would get a thorough cleaning including a complete shampoo of the carpet. In regular non-pet rooms carpet is not routinely shampooed -- a top exec at Caesars told me this. So if you wanted the "cleanest rooms" the pet rooms were the ones to get.