Travelodge and Premier Travel Inn, the UK’s two leading budget hotel chains, have both announced that they will be banning smoking in all their rooms in January 2008.

The English smoking ban, which comes into force this weekend, does not apply to all hotel bedrooms, but the two rivals will be enforcing their own bans in the new year.

From 1 July, all English hotels will have to ensure all their public areas – such as bars or restaurants – are smoke-free, but bedrooms are deemed private areas and can be smoked in, so long as they have adequate ventilation among other requirements.

Travelodge chief executive, Grant Hearn, said: “We are always talking to our customers and staff about important social issues such as ‘no smoking’ and the response in favour of the ban has been extremely powerful. Just 12 per cent of our customers said they were smokers and half over those were supportive of smoke-free hotels.”

All Travelodge hotels opened from 1 July this year will already have a 100 per cent no-smoking policy.

Premier Travel Inn, which is soon to be known as Premier Inn, is to undertake an intensive six-month deep cleaning process to ensure all smoking rooms are inline with non-smoking standards.

Patrick Dempsey, Premier Travel Inn’s managing director, said: “We have taken this decision to benefit both our guests and our team members. Over the last four months we have undertaken a complete no smoking trial at several of our Scottish sites and the feedback from both guests and team members has been really positive.”