The impact of the smoking ban on individual hospitality venues

Abstract

Secondhand smoking has a serious negative impact on human health, but this can be mitigated by anti-smoking policies. The enforcement of these policies is always accompanied by the voices of the hospitality venues representatives, concerned about the economic decline and the loss of customers. The aim of our research was to analyse the impact of the anti-smoking act on the operation of individual hospitality venues and to uncover the role of spatial relations and the extent of their impact. Correlation and regression, along with spatial analysis, were used to model the impact of the ban. The businesses felt the impact of the changes in visitor rates immediately after the introduction of the act, yet within two years there were no differences in visitor rates or revenues. One of the strongest correlations was in the spatial clusters where businesses of the same type (smoking/non-smoking) had been concentrated before the ban came into force. Our findings proved that, regarding visitor rates and revenues, from the spatial perspective there was no statistically significant connection with the more tourist-oriented centre, or with the distance of businesses from their nearest competitor. Conversely, the presence of hospitality venues in a cluster did prove statistically significant.