Smoking Rules in Dutch Hotels,
and What They Cover

Smoking indoors in bars, restaurants and hotels has been prohibited nationally in the Netherlands for a long time now, and hotels treat the rule as settled rather than optional. Lobbies, restaurants, bars and shared corridors are always smoke free as a result, with no property left to decide otherwise, which makes this one of the more predictable rules a traveller will encounter anywhere in the country.

This surprises some visitors given the city's reputation for a relaxed approach to cannabis in designated coffeeshops. The two things are unrelated. A coffeeshop is a specific, separately regulated kind of venue, and the indoor smoking rule that applies to a hotel lobby or a restaurant has nothing to do with what is or is not tolerated elsewhere in the city.

Increasingly, yes, and often entirely. Many hotels across the city, from large chains to smaller independents, now designate every room as non-smoking, a step beyond what the indoor public-space ban itself technically requires. A shrinking number of properties still offer a specific smoking room or floor, usually clearly marked as such, so it is worth checking directly with your hotel if this matters to you rather than assuming either way.

There is no single rule here, and it genuinely varies by hotel. Some balconies and private terraces attached to a room are treated as outdoor space where smoking is permitted, while others fall under the same non-smoking policy as the room itself. Opening a window in a designated non-smoking room does not generally exempt a guest from the policy, and smoke residue is usually detectable well after the fact, which is exactly why hotels enforce this the way they do. If a private outdoor space genuinely matters to your stay, it is a reasonable thing to ask about directly when you book rather than a question worth feeling awkward about.

Where a hotel does tolerate tobacco on a balcony or terrace, cannabis is usually a separate and stricter matter. Its smell lingers in fabric and carpet more persistently than cigarette smoke, and most properties treat it as a non-smoking violation regardless of where in the room it happened, balcony included. If this distinction matters to your plans, it is worth asking the hotel directly rather than assuming a balcony that permits one also permits the other.

Hotels that catch a breach of their non-smoking policy typically charge a cleaning fee, deducted from the deposit held at check-in or added directly to the final bill. The amount varies considerably by property, and it reflects the cost of a genuinely deep clean rather than a token penalty, since smoke odour is difficult and time consuming to remove from soft furnishings and carpet.

Some hotels also reserve the right to move a guest to a different room, or in rare cases end a stay early, if a breach is serious or repeated. This is uncommon in practice, most cases are resolved with a cleaning fee alone, but it is worth knowing the policy has more than one tier for properties that take it especially seriously.

Most hotels apply the same non-smoking policy to vaping and e-cigarettes as to traditional cigarettes, even where the underlying law treats the two differently. It is a house decision rather than a citywide rule, so if this distinction matters to your stay, a direct question to the hotel before booking is the only reliable way to know its specific policy. Vapour itself can also trigger a room's smoke detector in some properties, which is a practical reason hotels prefer to treat it the same as smoke rather than draw a fine distinction between the two.

Ask specifically when you book rather than assuming either way, since policies differ enough between properties that a guess is genuinely a coin toss. A hotel near Amsterdam Centrum with a mix of room types is more likely to have at least one smoking-permitted option than a fully renovated modern property, though neither is guaranteed.

None of this changes how a suite visit unfolds. Molly and Danielle are both entirely comfortable in a non-smoking room, which describes most bookings in the city, and neither an evening's conversation nor the arrangements around it are affected by which policy your particular hotel happens to run. The booking itself follows the usual steps, with the room's own house rules simply staying in the background where they belong.