Radon Testing for Hotels and Hospitality Properties

1. Why hotels and hospitality properties test for radon

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that seeps up from soil and rock and collects inside buildings. It is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, after smoking. Two things make a building more likely to have a radon problem: a large area in contact with the ground, and people who spend a lot of time inside. A hotel checks both boxes more than almost any other commercial property.

A lodging property is essentially a large occupied footprint sitting on the soil, with guest rooms, a lobby, offices, laundry, kitchens, and amenity spaces all close to the ground. Unlike an office that empties at night, a hotel is occupied around the clock, and the lowest floors often hold guest rooms and the spaces guests and staff use most. That combination is exactly what raises the odds that radon is present and that people are breathing it.

2. Who is exposed in a lodging building

Radon enters from the soil, so the highest concentrations are usually in spaces on or below grade. In a hotel that means ground-floor and lower-level guest rooms, the lobby, back-of-house offices, employee break and locker areas, laundry and mechanical rooms, and amenity spaces such as a fitness room, indoor pool area, spa, or lower-level meeting rooms. These are the spaces where soil gas first accumulates.

Two groups carry the most exposure. Employees who work full shifts on the ground floor, at the front desk, in offices, or in back-of-house areas spend long, regular hours in the spaces closest to the soil. Guests assigned to ground-contact rooms breathe that air overnight. A single night is a small exposure, but a hotel cycles many guests through the same rooms, and a room that is elevated is elevated for everyone who stays in it. Upper floors generally carry lower risk, but elevator shafts and stairwells can draw soil gas upward, so upper levels are not automatically safe.

3. Acquisition, franchise, and lender due diligence

For many owners, radon testing first comes up during a transaction. When a hotel is bought, sold, or refinanced, the deal usually includes an environmental review, and radon can be part of that review. Buyers want to know what they are taking on, lenders want the collateral assessed, and a high radon result discovered late can slow a closing or change a price. Folding radon testing into due diligence early keeps it from becoming a last-minute surprise.

Franchise relationships add another layer. A brand that flags its name on a property has its own property condition and risk expectations, and environmental items can be part of a property improvement plan or brand review. Because requirements vary by lender, by brand, and by deal, the right move is to confirm what applies to your specific transaction with your lender, franchisor, and counsel, then plan testing into the timeline. Our broader commercial radon testing guide walks through how testing fits into a commercial transaction.

4. Brand reputation and liability risk

Hospitality runs on trust. Guests choose a property expecting a clean, safe place to sleep, and a brand spends years building that reputation. An unaddressed indoor-air-quality issue cuts against both. Radon does not produce a smell, a stain, or an immediate symptom, which is part of why it is easy to ignore, but it is a documented health hazard, and a property owner who knows the building has not been tested is choosing not to know.

Testing and, where needed, mitigating is the responsible path and also the defensible one. A clear record of testing performed to recognized protocols, the levels found, and any mitigation installed shows that the owner took a known hazard seriously. That record protects guests and staff first, and it protects the business and the brand as well.

5. How testing a large hotel works

Testing a large lodging property is a planned, building-wide exercise, not a single device in a single room. It starts with a walk of the property to map which spaces sit on or below grade and which are occupiable. From there, a sampling plan is built that covers a representative set of ground-contact guest rooms along with the common and amenity spaces on the lowest occupied level: the lobby, offices, break areas, fitness and pool areas, and lower-level meeting rooms.

Measurement devices are placed in the selected spaces and left undisturbed for the measurement period, then retrieved for lab analysis. Testing should follow recognized consensus protocols. The American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists (AARST) publishes ANSI/AARST standards for measuring radon in large and multifamily buildings, and a defensible report references the protocol used rather than relying on a generic home test kit. You can review the published standards through the AARST standards library. Pricing for testing is typically scaled to the number of spaces sampled, and a larger property gains efficiency because a crew places and retrieves many devices in one mobilization.

6. Minimizing guest disruption

The biggest practical concern for an operator is the guest experience, and testing is built to protect it. The measurement devices are small and quiet, and they sit out of the way for the measurement period. Most of the work is placement and retrieval, which a crew can schedule around the property's rhythm.

For guest rooms, the cleanest approach is to test rooms while they are held out of inventory, or to schedule placement during a lower-occupancy window so the same rooms are not generating revenue and carrying a device at once. For common and amenity spaces, devices are positioned discreetly where they will not be bumped or moved. Coordinating with housekeeping and the front desk keeps devices from being relocated mid-test. Done this way, a guest typically has no idea testing is underway, and the property keeps operating normally.

7. The 4.0 pCi/L action level and what follows

Radon is measured in picocuries per liter (pCi/L), and the widely used action level is 4.0 pCi/L. Any tested space that reads at or above 4.0 pCi/L should be mitigated, and the work is not finished until post-mitigation testing confirms the space reads below 4.0 pCi/L. This is the same threshold used across most US radon programs.

It helps to be precise about what the action level means. It is the level at which action is called for, not a sharp line between safe and dangerous. Radon risk is continuous, so a space reading just under 4.0 pCi/L still carries some risk, and some owners of long-occupied buildings choose to reduce levels further when the cost is modest. For a hotel, where the same ground-floor rooms are used night after night, a result near the action level is worth a careful look rather than a shrug.

8. Mitigation, then retest

When a space tests at or above the action level, the fix is mitigation. The most common method is sub-slab depressurization, which uses a fan and a piping system to draw soil gas from beneath the slab and vent it safely above the building before it can enter occupied space. The system is sized and routed for the building, and in a hotel the routing is chosen to keep fans quiet and pipes out of guest sightlines.

Mitigation is followed by a retest. The retest is what proves the system worked, by confirming the previously elevated space now reads below 4.0 pCi/L. The full record, showing the levels found, the system installed, and the post-mitigation results, is what a lender, a buyer, or a franchisor will want to see, and it is what demonstrates the issue was actually resolved rather than just identified. Because mitigation depends on how many spaces read high and on the building's construction, a firm scope and price come after testing and a site visit.

9. Radon risk in metro Atlanta

Georgia does not have a state radon testing law, which leads some owners to assume radon is not a local concern. The data says otherwise. On the EPA Map of Radon Zones, four metro Atlanta counties, Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb, and Gwinnett, are Zone 1, the highest category, meaning a predicted average at or above 4.0 pCi/L. Several surrounding north Georgia counties also carry elevated designations driven by the region's granite and uranium-bearing bedrock.

For a hotel in metro Atlanta, the combination of genuinely elevated regional radon and a large ground-contact building full of guests and staff means high results are common enough to plan for. Whether testing is driven by a transaction or simply by good stewardship of the asset, building it into your planning rather than reacting to it keeps a high reading from turning into a problem at the worst possible time.

10. Frequently asked questions