How to Smoke in a Hotel

For those of us who partake in legal herbs and concentrates, sometimes traveling can be a nightmare. The stress from long periods away from our home setup and, at times, where herb is inaccessible or not well received, can start to pervade our thoughts. To avoid these problems we prepare to the best of our ability; stock up, pack it safe, but sometimes we experience roadblocks. The biggest one — getting around a non-smoking hotel room.

Hotels have begun shifting away from smoke friendly rooms, leaving smokers to come up with an array of techniques to smoke without getting slapped with a fee. Now there’s no guarantee that any of these methods will work, but they’ve worked for someone! Let’s go through some basics before we get into it.

Tips for Smoking in a Hotel

1. Use a Sploof or SmokeBuddy

A SmokeBuddy is a personal air filter made to remove smoke and eliminate odor. Blow smoke in, clean air comes out the other end. These lifesavers are convenient and compact for travel while being discreet and easily stored. If you don’t have one, try making a “sploof” - the DIY version. Grab a plastic bottle and cut off the bottom. Fill the bottle with dryer sheets and then pull a few flat against the end before securing with elastics. Now you have it. Just blow your smoke in and cap the bottle so it can only escape through the dryer sheets.

2. Do NOT throw anything incriminating in the trash

Hotel employees aren’t idiots. Working in a hotel, housekeepers are often tasked with cleaning the same rooms or same wing of the hotel repeatedly. This means they know what things should look like, and can spot, or sniff, if anything is amiss. Ashing into the hotel trashcan is just outright ignorant.

This means Flush All Evidence. 

3. Brew a cup of Coffee

Some hotels have a coffee pot and single cup servings complementary in the rooms. If they do, brew some while you’re smoking, or just after you’ve finished. The steam from the boiling water should help capture some of the smell and the coffee aroma should help mask anything else. Plus you get to enjoy a fresh cup when you’re done!

Preparing the Room

Hotels are becoming increasingly small, with no balcony, and now no opening windows. This complicates things, but like I said before, smokers are innovators. Start by placing a damp towel along the bottom of the room door. It doesn’t need to be dripping wet, and even a dry towel works, just not as well. This will help keep the smell from getting into the hallway where staff and other guests can smell.

Next, get some airflow going away from the door if you can. If the room has a fan in it, this is the perfect time to use it. If there is a window, open it, and have the fan blowing towards it. If not, still get air flowing away from the main door. Now some smokers swear blowing the smoke out of your hotel window is enough, but that’s not always an option, and the community as a whole strongly backs the shower method.

The Shower Method involves turning your shower on the hottest setting and letting the steam fill the bathroom. Make sure you’re on cloud nine! Get in the bathroom, cover the bottom of the door the way you did the front door, and if your hotel bathroom has an exhaust fan, turn that on right before you smoke.

Now, when you smoke, the odor/tar from the combustion smoke will attach to the steam, rather than the walls of the bathroom. Then the exhaust fan will take them up and out of the room. That’s all there is to the shower method.

We really recommend that you don’t smoke blunts inside the room if you can help it. This goes for joints too. I know bongs and pipes aren’t the easiest things to pack, but papers/rillos leave the most offensive smell. If you can’t, or refuse, to step outside, blunts just aren’t worth the risk. If you have a balcony and want to try it, just be aware of other guests. If they complain, you could get much more than a cleaning fee.

Another Way? — Vaping

Vaping can be your best friend in a hotel room. Technology is amazing, and the invention of discreet vape pens have made life significantly easier. The smoke from combustion (e.g. burning/using a lighter) lingers much longer than the vapor produced by vaporizers. One study even found that exhaled e-cig vapor dissipated from the air in seconds, while the exhaled smoke from a cigarette lingered 30-45 minutes. While we’re not talking cigarettes, that wrap, tobacco or not, is being combusted and the carbon and tar inside the combusted smoke holds onto and stains materials.

These relatively inexpensive pens could save you a lot of grief on your next trip. Using these helpful gadgets with just the window open wouldn’t worry me a bit, though I would still block my room door with a damp towel!