No smoking inside, at any of the 44 doors Simple Lyfe Stays manages across western Michigan. Outside on the deck or the porch is fine. Vaping counts, cannabis follows the same rule, and smoking indoors carries a cleaning fee written into the house rules you receive with your booking. That is the entire policy, and it is the same at a cabin in Baldwin as it is at a cottage outside Sparta. What surprises most guests is not the rule. It is where the rule lives, and how a host in Lake County finds out that it was broken.
Can you smoke inside a Michigan cabin rental?
No. Indoor smoking is prohibited at every property we manage, in Newaygo, Lake, Mason, Oceana, Mecosta and Kent counties alike, and the prohibition covers cigarettes, cigars, vaping and cannabis without distinction. Our house rules state it in one line: no smoking inside, outside on the deck or porch is fine, cannabis follows the same rule. There is no designated indoor room, no exception for a bathroom with the fan running, and no door where the answer is different.
Can you smoke outside on the deck or the porch?
Yes, and that part is written as plainly as the prohibition. Hillside Cabin outside Sparta, in Kent County, has an upper deck that sits separate from the patio, patio table and chairs, and a fire pit with a patio area around it. Hawks Nest on Whalen Lake, in Baldwin, has an uncovered deck, a private yard and a fire pit. Outdoor space is where the answer stops being a rule and starts being a place.
The one thing worth reading before you step outside is the neighbor language on your own booking. Hawks Nest carries three separate guest-facing notes about neighbors: quiet hours from 11:00 PM to 8:00 AM, a blanket no-fireworks rule written because the neighbors are close, and a note that the property line runs near the east side of the house and is marked with signs. A deck in a dense lake neighborhood is still outside, and it is still twenty feet from somebody's bedroom window.
Does vaping count as smoking at a vacation rental?
Yes. Vaping is treated as smoking in our house rules and in our 30-night-plus occupancy agreement, and cannabis is treated the same way whether it is smoked or vaped. Michigan legalized recreational cannabis in 2018, which is exactly why guests ask, and the answer does not change: legal to possess is not the same as permitted indoors in somebody else's building. The deck rule applies to all of it.
What does smoking inside actually cost?
A flat cleaning fee, named in the house rules attached to your stay. It is a set amount rather than a repair estimate, which is the part guests tend to get backwards. Our 30-night-plus occupancy agreement handles the same breach differently, as remediation cost, so the figure that applies to you depends on which agreement your stay sits under. Read the house rules on your own booking rather than a blog post for the number, and ask before you book if it matters to your decision.
Where is the smoking rule actually written?
In the house manual, not in the booking record. This is the detail that no listing reveals, and we only know it because we pulled every door field by field. The per-door guest-instruction namespace in our booking software carries 18 distinct codes across the portfolio, including a field for firewood, a field for summer bugs and ticks, a field for fireworks and a field for keeping the windows closed. Not one of them is smoking. Pulled live this week, Hawks Nest returns 12 populated guest-instruction fields and Hillside Cabin returns 11, and neither set contains a smoking field.
Where smoking does appear per door is the listing attributes we capture in our own amenity inventory, where both Hillside Cabin and Hawks Nest are recorded as smoking not allowed. So the rule reaches you through the house manual and the listing, and it is absent from the record the host's software actually runs on. If you want certainty, the house manual is the document to read.
Are there smoke or vape sensors in the cabins?
No. There is no smoke sensor, vape sensor or cigarette-detection device installed at any door we manage. The noise monitor that would do it, which detects cigarette smoke alongside noise and occupancy, sits on our internal equipment shortlist and has not been bought. The smoke alarms in these cabins are smoke alarms, wired for fire, not for rule enforcement. Guests who have read about hosts deploying smoke detection should know that at these properties it does not exist.
So how would a host ever know?
The turnover, and it is more thorough than guests picture. Our cleaning standard sends the cleaner through the entire home with instructions to photograph and report anything damaged, missing, stained or unusual, and to check closets, nightstands, under beds and drawers. The standing rule is report first, photograph, then move or clean, so nothing gets tidied away before it is documented. And in a dispute, the record that settles the argument is not the photo of the damage. It is the completion record from the turnover before your stay, which is what establishes the condition you walked into.
One small thing happens on our side that nobody plans for. The keyword list that routes a cleaner's text message treats the word smoke as fire, alongside gas, CO alarm and sparking, so a cleaner reporting a smoke smell pages the on-call person as an emergency before anyone considers a house rule. Which is a decent argument, if you needed another one, for taking it out to the deck. Browse our western Michigan cabins, have a look at Hillside Cabin overlooking Olin Lake or Hawks Nest on Whalen Lake, and read the house rules on checkout while you are at it.