Well, people can definitely smell *something* when I
vape. It's usually a perfectly pleasant smell, but especially in a confined area (such as my car) they can smell it, so I crack my window just as if I were smoking.
So the idea that people can smell something is not at all unusual. The reason we don't smell it ourselves is because our smell and taste receptors are already so saturated from using it in concentrated form that we can't detect the diluted scents.
The complaints are, of course, bogus in that the real reason they are complaining is likely not because of the smell, but the appearance. People have been trained and conditioned to find anything that even looks like smoking viscerally offensive -- as if you were beating a child in front of them. So they will sometimes knee-jerk complain. I vape in public as much as possible to hopefully help de-condition.
The proprietor of an establishment has to make good business decisions. He has to balance the desires of various members of the public. Facts and so forth really have nothing to do with it because when it comes to sales -- opinions are just as important as facts, even when they contradict reality. So if he believes he will lose business by allowing
vaping,
vaping will be restricted. The key is to make sure he understands the other side of the coin: that he will lose YOUR business if he restricts it. That gives him more than one side to weigh in the decision.