NonSmoking Guarantee Campaign - anyone with me?

[HUFF590]

I know from working with a lot of smokers, that even if a smoker gets a non smoking room they are going to smoke ther anyway, thats why I dont think anything will work imho. I would like to see spit cans in the rooms though. lol

 

[Duckieluckey]

DVC should be able to guarantee both smoking and non- smoking. Once I was at the pool and was told by a smoker that he had requested a smoking room and got a non smoking room so he felt that he had a right to smoke in that room. Disney knows how many rooms they have. If the non-smoking rooms are full – sorry no non-smoking rooms available. This has happened to me at other places.

Going on the Members Cruise? If so see:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=663716

 

[Dean]

I'm for having smoking vs non smoking as separate categories. Plus making it difficult and expensive for anyone to smoke in a NS room. However, Pete has said before he does not want DIS used for a "letter writing campaign" or similar and I'll respect that wish.

 

[Northwoods]

I'm sorry I posted this as a campaign - I was not aware that it was frowned upon.

I'm just tired of hearing of the problems and think we should do something about it. And I'm hoping someone on this board can give some recommendations on how to get DVC to listen.

What do we need to do?

I sent an email to MS but I'm not sure flooding MS with emails is the right way to go. How do we get to the people that can make a change?

 

[Northwoods]

I just got the following reply from MS:
______________________
Thank you for your email.

Requests are just that, we can not guarantee them.

However with your family allergies you can request medical non smoking room and they are guaranteed.

Regards,
Sally
______________________

So who do we contact to request a policy change?

 

[Kadorto]

I'm not sure either...but would love to see the resorts smoke-free. Not really sure why anyone would want to smoke anyhow...look at all the money you could save to buy more points.

 

[tjkraz]

Originally posted by Northwoods
I'm just tired of hearing of the problems and think we should do something about it. And I'm hoping someone on this board can give some recommendations on how to get DVC to listen.

What do we need to do?

I'd start by attending the Wednesday Member Update meetings whenever you make a trip to WDW, and, more importantly, attend the condo association meetings each December.

Making a personal appearance to share your comments is likely to make more of an impression than hundreds of email messages. Getting others to openly share your POV wouldn't hurt either.

 

[DrTomorrow]

Originally posted by zulaya
[...]
If hotel chains like Holiday Inn can guarantee non-smoking and smoking, so can DVC. [...]

I'd be very curious to hear from someone who actually runs the front desk / reservation system at one of these hotel chains on how they handle this issue. I'd believe that they depend on the fact that they rarely have the occupancy rate that a DVC Resort has in order to manage things. (And I have stayed at several popular lower.cost hotel chains, had a NS room reserved, and been told on arrival that all the NS rooms are filled, so it doesn't appear to be an exact science )

The big problem as I see it is that a room is either NS or S - and there's no way to temporarily shift room inventory from one category to another. [This assumes that, once someone smokes in a room, it's effectively a S room until an expensive 'fumigation' is performed.] So someone makes a guess as to what the ratio should be at each resort, and if they're off, rooms start to go empty - and someone who had their hopes on a NS 2BR at BWV is told that the only NS 2BR available are at SSR (oh, the humanity )

Disclosure: I'm a NS who preferrs a NS room, but my parents both smoked, so a S room simply reminds me of home....

 

[lenshanem]

My Dad has worked for Holiday Inn since I was a baby and now my brother works for them, too.

I'll ask them what their take on this is.

I do know that back when I took them to BCV in July my Dad wasn't happy about us being so far apart.

He didn't understand why I booked eleven months out and asked for our rooms to be close together and we ended up in separate wings.

 

[kathleena]

Surprised that MS responded non-smoking for medical reasons IS guaranteed as I was told quite emphatically by Jackie that they are not. What ARE however is booked before arrival and second behind the handi-capped requests. Therefore - the assumption is that is as good as a guarantee.

Despite that - a reservation I have thru CRO with a request for medical non-smoking does say non-smoking guaranteed. My DVC ressies only say non-smoking for medical reasons. It would be nice if they would use those words on the DVC ressies.

Maybe it's just semantics.

 

[Chuck S]

Originally posted by lenshanem
My Dad has worked for Holiday Inn ......
I'll ask them what their take on this is.

With all due respect, Shan, Holiday Inns (or any regular "hotel" chain) operate much differently from a timeshare. Hotels generally have lower occupany rates, yielding more unused/unassigned rooms in inventory at any given time. Hotel stay are generally much shorter, so it it easier to assure that rooms will be closer together, because it is more likely that someone who occupies a room that meets your requests will be checking out the same day you check-in. As you know, with the weekday vs. weekend point structure of DVC, most guests checking on Sunday (members on points) will check-out on Friday, and most guests checking-in on Friday (cash guests) will check out Sunday...thus those 2 days (Sunday & Friday) would see the most flexibility in assignable rooms. But if you arrive late, because of the volume, you also sort of get "what's left". Likewise, folks checking in on Saturday & Monday also probably have a relatively poor selection of rooms, if the resort is at capacity.