Dormy Inn Ikebukuro says 全室禁煙, all rooms non-smoking, with smoking booths on two floors. Dormy Inn Niigata says 4F喫煙フロア、他禁煙フロア: the 4th floor is a smoking floor and the others are non-smoking. So a chain name doesn’t give you the label. Japan’s indoor smoking rules took full effect on April 1, 2020, but they don’t cover hotel guest rooms. Whether a room allows smoking is the hotel’s decision, and on a booking page it shows up as a Japanese label on the room or the plan.
Last checked: October 4, 2026. Hotel policies change, so the hotel’s own page on the day you book outranks anything here.
The law left guest rooms out
Under the amended law, facilities many people use, passenger ships and trains, and restaurants are non-smoking indoors in principle, in full effect from April 1, 2020. Shared areas such as a lobby or restaurant fall on that side of the principle.
Guest rooms are treated differently. Hotel and inn guest rooms are exempt, next to private residences and sleeping rooms on trains and ships. Tokyo’s health center puts it in one line: 「（注）人の居住する場所、ホテルや旅館の客室は規制対象外です。」, which translates roughly as “places where people live, and hotel and inn guest rooms, are outside the regulation”.
The law also uses its own smoking-room terms. 喫煙専用室 is one of four kinds of smoking room a facility can set up if it meets the conditions. A 喫煙ルーム on a hotel’s booking page is something else, a guest room the hotel sells for smoking.
A hotel can also go further than the law. Sunshine City Prince Hotel banned all smoking, e-cigarettes included, in all guest rooms and other facilities, with one designated smoking area in the lobby. Other hotels use the room exemption and sell smoking rooms.
As of October 2026, from MHLW’s amended law page and smoking room page (both in Japanese), the Kanagawa health page (in Japanese), the Tokyo health center page (in Japanese) and the Prince Hotels notice.
The labels you will see
The English is approximate.
| Label | Reads as | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| 禁煙 / 禁煙ルーム | non-smoking / non-smoking room | Richmond Hotel Tokyo Suidobashi’s room page has a booking button labeled 禁煙ルーム for each room it sells that way |
| 喫煙 / 喫煙ルーム | smoking / smoking room | The same page, as a second button labeled 喫煙ルーム beside the first |
| 全室禁煙 | all rooms non-smoking | Dormy Inn Ikebukuro’s room page, with smoking booths on the 2nd and 15th floors |
| 全館禁煙 | whole building non-smoking | Tokyu Stay’s FAQ page, which pairs it with 全室禁煙 and mentions a booth in a shared space. Dormy Inn Nagoya Sakae uses it in a notice |
| 喫煙フロア | smoking floor | Dormy Inn Niigata’s room page: the 4th floor, with the rest non-smoking |
| 喫煙ブース / 喫煙所 | smoking booth / smoking area, outside the rooms | The Dormy and Tokyu Stay pages above. Richmond Hotel Narita separates a 喫煙室 you reserve from a 喫煙所 on the first floor |
| 加熱式たばこ専用 | heated tobacco only | Route Inn Uozu’s room page, covered in the heated tobacco section |
Two points come out of that. A 全館禁煙 or 全室禁煙 page can still direct you to a booth, so the label describes your room and the building, and a booth is a separate fact. And the same word can sit at different levels: 喫煙フロア describes a floor, 喫煙ルーム a single room, 喫煙所 a place that isn’t a room at all.
What 14 hotel pages say about themselves
Nine of 14 hotel pages say their rooms or building are non-smoking. Five sell smoking floors, smoking rooms or heated-tobacco rooms. Business-hotel chains dominate the 14, and older notices carry their dates because a policy from 2018 or 2020 may not be the policy now.
Pages that say rooms are non-smoking
| Property or page | What the hotel says |
|---|---|
| Tokyu Stay (FAQ page, in Japanese) | 全館・全室禁煙, booth in a shared space |
| Dormy Inn Ikebukuro (in Japanese) | 全室禁煙, booths on 2F and 15F |
| Dormy Inn Nagoya Sakae (notice, in Japanese) | 全館禁煙 from February 10, 2025, booths on 1F and 6F (notice of February 7, 2025) |
| Super Hotel JR Shin-Osaka Higashiguchi (notice, in Japanese) | all guest rooms non-smoking from October 1, 2025, and no smoking area on or off the premises (notice of May 2, 2025) |
| Hotel Monterey group (notice, in Japanese) | all guest rooms of the group’s hotels non-smoking |
| MIMARU (FAQ) | “All MIMARU rooms are non-smoking.” |
| Agora Tsuki (FAQ) | “All rooms at our hotel are non-smoking,” with an outdoor smoking area |
| Sunshine City Prince Hotel (notice) | all smoking banned in all guest rooms, lobby smoking area (notice of April 1, 2020) |
| Hotel Nikko Kansai Airport (notice) | all guest rooms non-smoking from September 25, 2018 |
Pages that sell smoking floors, smoking rooms or heated-tobacco rooms
| Property or page | What the hotel says |
|---|---|
| Dormy Inn Niigata (in Japanese) | 4F is a 喫煙フロア and the other floors are non-smoking, with booths on 1F, 2F and 10F |
| Richmond Hotel Tokyo Suidobashi (in Japanese) | Moderate Single and Moderate Double each have both a 禁煙ルーム and a 喫煙ルーム button. The four twin types show only 禁煙ルーム |
| Richmond Hotel Narita (notice, in Japanese) | smoking products only in a smoking room or the 1st-floor smoking area, and guests who want to smoke are told to reserve a 喫煙室 |
| Route Inn Hon-Hachinohe (in Japanese) | both 禁煙室 and 喫煙室 exist. Non-smoking rooms have humidifying air purifiers and smoking rooms have a ceiling-mounted nanoe generator |
| Route Inn Uozu (in Japanese) | each room type lists a count of smoking rooms and a count of non-smoking rooms, with the heated-tobacco-only share |
Dormy Inn is the clearest case against reading the chain name as a policy. Ikebukuro and Nagoya Sakae say no smoking in rooms, and Niigata keeps a smoking floor. Read the page for the property you’re booking.
Booking sites and the special-requests box
Rakuten Travel. Rakuten, for domestic and overseas bookings alike, does not accept requests to accommodations, so contact goes directly to the hotel. If you got the smoking or non-smoking choice wrong, a change that doesn’t alter the price may be possible at the hotel, so ask the hotel directly.
As of October 2026, from Rakuten Travel (in Japanese): request help page and plan-change help page.
Jalan. It runs nationwide index pages by prefecture, one for hotels with 禁煙 plans and one for hotels with 喫煙 plans. They are organized by plan, so the label you’re checking belongs to the plan you pay for.
As of October 2026, from Jalan (in Japanese): non-smoking plan index and smoking plan index.
Booking.com. Its FAQ says: “If there are no rooms listed as ‘smoking rooms,’ it means that the hotel does not allow smoking in rooms”.
As of October 2026, from Booking.com: FAQ.
Agoda. Agoda tells hotels that special requests are by default “not confirmed and are subject to availability at the property upon arrival”.
As of October 2026, from Agoda: Partner Hub article.
A hotel’s own words show what that means in practice. Toya Kohantei’s FAQ, asked whether you can have a non-smoking room, answers “We are sorry, we are not able to promise it definitely. However, we try to arrange to meet your requests as much as possible”.
As of October 2026, from Toya Kohantei: FAQ.
When a listing shows only one kind
A listing with one label shows what that page sells, not what the hotel sells elsewhere. Richmond Suidobashi’s twin rooms show only 禁煙ルーム. Sotetsu Hotels’ column for guests names two ways people end up in a smoking room: no non-smoking room was free when they booked, or they booked a 喫煙ルーム by mistake.
As of October 2026, from Sotetsu Hotels (in Japanese): guest column.
A page that shows only 喫煙 for your dates therefore doesn’t tell you whether a non-smoking version exists or is sold out. Richmond shows that an official page can sell both versions of one room type as separate buttons, so compare the booking-site listing with the hotel’s own page.
Heated tobacco has its own rooms
Hotels don’t treat heated tobacco devices such as IQOS, glo and Ploom as “no smoke, so fine.” Seven hotel pages speak to them or to electronic cigarettes:
- Super Hotel’s FAQ says an e-cigarette such as IQOS can’t be used in a non-smoking room and asks guests to use the store’s designated smoking place.
- Hotel Monterey’s notice names IQOS, Ploom Tech and glo and says they can’t be used in non-smoking rooms or non-smoking areas.
- Richmond Hotel Narita lists heated tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, pipes, vapes and more as smoking products allowed only in a smoking room or the first-floor smoking area.
- Richmond Hotel Sapporo, in a notice of May 13, 2019, asks guests not to use electronic cigarettes in non-smoking rooms after cleaners found butts in the bins.
- Hotel Nikko Kansai Airport’s 2018 notice says smoking includes an electric cigarette.
- Sunshine City Prince Hotel banned e-cigarettes along with all other smoking in its guest rooms.
- Route Inn Uozu counts 加熱式たばこ専用 rooms within its smoking rooms, covered next.
As of October 2026, from Super Hotel’s FAQ and Richmond Hotel Sapporo’s notice (both in Japanese).
MHLW makes the same split in the law’s vocabulary. It lists 加熱式たばこ専用喫煙室 as its own kind of smoking room, limited to heated tobacco and apart from the kind that allows cigarettes.
Route Inn Uozu shows two counts for every room type: 喫煙室数 (smoking rooms) and 禁煙室数 (non-smoking rooms). The シングル type shows 「24室（うち加熱式たばこ専用12室）」 for smoking rooms and 「47室」 for non-smoking rooms, so one room type is sold in three kinds. The コンフォートシングル type shows 「加熱式たばこ専用12室」 and 「24室」. Route Inn also states that regular paper cigarettes can’t be used in the heated-tobacco-only rooms.
When the room smells anyway
Sotetsu Hotels’ column says you may open the door of the room you booked and notice tobacco at once. It says hotels commonly answer with air purifiers and deodorizing spray, and that some of its Sotetsu Fresa Inn hotels use an ozone deodorizer.
For a guest in that room, the column suggests two things:
- Ask at check-in whether a non-smoking room has come free. If cancellations have opened one, a swap may be possible.
- Ask for the room with the least smell. A polite request at the front desk may get consideration.
I have seen a guest make that kind of request at a front desk. Both depend on a free room. Room-type changes after booking are subject to availability and should go through the official website or the agency you booked with, Agora Tsuki’s FAQ says. Toya Kohantei’s FAQ adds that when it can’t give a non-smoking room, it works to remove the smoke smell from the room it does give.
Hotels also write the non-smoking label into their rules. Hotel New Otani Tokyo’s say that if a non-smoking room is found to have been smoked in, the hotel will seek compensation from the guest for the lost sales while the room can’t be sold.
As of October 2026, from Hotel New Otani Tokyo: rules page.
Before you book
I check the smoking label every time I book a business hotel.
- Pick the label, not a request. Choose a room or plan marked 禁煙 or “non-smoking,” and don’t rely on a note in a free-text box. Requests are unconfirmed.
- Read the room name and the plan name. The smoking choice is tied to the plan, so check the plan you’re actually paying for.
- Open the hotel’s own page for the same room. A booking-site listing with one label doesn’t tell you the hotel sells only one.
- Look for 全室禁煙 or 全館禁煙 on the page for the property you’re booking, and check the date. Hotels in one chain can differ, and several of the notices above are from 2018, 2019 or 2020.
- Reserve, then confirm. Toya Kohantei’s FAQ suggests choosing the non-smoking option when you reserve and emailing the hotel after booking to reconfirm. If the confirmation doesn’t carry the 禁煙 label, ask before you travel.
- If you want no tobacco at all, skip 加熱式たばこ専用. It is a tobacco room, and Route Inn says only that paper cigarettes aren’t allowed in it.
- If the room smells at check-in, ask then. Ask whether a non-smoking room has opened, or for the room with the least smell. Both are the hotel’s call.
The short version
Each hotel decides whether its guest rooms allow smoking, so two hotels of one chain can differ. The label that counts is the 禁煙 or 喫煙 on the room or plan you book. A request box isn’t a promise, a heated-tobacco-only room is still a tobacco room, and if the room smells, ask the front desk at check-in whether a non-smoking one has opened up.
Cover photo: a twin room at Hotel La Raison Osaka by J o, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. It shows a different hotel from the ones discussed.
