Y’all may love your pets, and that’s fine. However, for some folks (including my spouse), pet allergies are a real pain when it comes to booking hotel rooms. Here’s the problem: so‑called “pet-friendly” hotels will proudly advertise that fact, whereas hotels that don’t allow pets tend to bury that info in their policies page. Seems that, in the hotel business, the dictum “never tell the customer no” is always in force — even when certain customers (again my spouse) would benefit by being told so up front.
A brief aside. By law, service dogs have free access to hotels, and hotels cannot ask guests with service dogs to pay room-cleaning fees. So, when one is searching for a hotel room, neither the absence of a pet-friendly badge nor the presence of a service-dog-only policy means much to an allergy sufferer. Nothing guarantees the searcher that any given room was not most-recently occupied by Fur-Flying Fido, shedding whatever bio-bits that Fido had a federally-protected right to shed and the hotel has no federal obligation to clean up.
And the designation “pet-friendly” is itself ambiguous. Does it mean the hotel not only welcomes pets but charges a low cleaning fee (or none at all) when pets stay in your room? Or does it mean the hotel has no designated pet-free rooms? Or that the hotel makes no extra effort to clean rooms where pets have stayed?
I have a sneaking suspicion (aren’t all suspicions of that kind?) that the extent to which a hotel room is cleaned has zero correlation with either the presence/absence of a pet or the pet-friendliness of the hotel or the size of any room-cleaning fee. Those who know better may correct me if I’m wrong, but my guess is, you get what you get. And what you will get if the hotel has a no-pet policy or charges more than a nominal cleaning fee are guests who sneak their dogs and cats into their rooms anyway and then lie about it.
So what can one do? My spouse and I were discussing this a while back when I was searching for (you guessed it) a pet-free hotel in Ohio. To make things easier in my searches, I had been bookmarking pet-free hotels in a folder named No Pet Hotels and — so I didn’t waste time on them — pet-friendly hotels in a folder named Pet Hotels XXX. (Which is not the name of an adult film, shame on you.)
Wouldn’t it be easier, we said to each other, if there were a way to filter searches so that only pet-free hotels pop up? Inspired, I did a Google search for “pet free hotels” and while I got lots of results for hotels where pets stay free, I found no results for no-pet hotels.
That got us to thinking (always a dangerous thing) that some website needs to fill the void. We could call it petfreehotels.com. So, in a giddy, anything-is-possible-on-the-internet moment, we decided to buy the petfreehotels.com domain and start building a database of hotels that publish a no-pets-allowed policy on their sites.
The site is up and running now — and there are over 2000 hotels on the list. I add hotels to the list every month — I also receive suggestions from readers on hotels to add and/or remove from the list. There are maps too! It’s been an interesting hobby, and hope some of you may find it valuable. Pet-Free Hotels.
Sounds like you’re sitting on a great get-rich-quick scheme, Craig! 🙂 I like it!
People don’t understand that FIDO does not want to go to a damn hotel!
I was a travel agent for 30 years. I’m very allergic to animals. I would very much like this website to exist. At the very least, you could set up a data base for people to add pet free hotels to your list… organized by country and city..
In the past, I’ve done hotel searches on expedia, parsed and downloaded the available hotels into an excel sheet, then repeated the same search using ‘allows pets’. then whatever hotel was not on the allows pets list, is probably a hotel that doesnt take pets.
I wish I found this before I booked my trip to Indianapolis. It looked like every decent hotel there was pet friendly, but then I found your website. Next time. Thank you for doing this!
Thank you Dana. I am still working on “SEO” (or how to be seen on the internet when you don’t pay for advertising). I’d be grateful if you let me know how you landed on petfreehotels.com.
Just had to switch rooms twice because of allergies. I thought I was alone on this battle. Thanks.
Thank you, thank you. I am good with dogs, BUT- I stop breathing around cats, or cat “leftovers”. Would be very helpful to me to also delineate hotels thatARE dogs only (IE NO CATS) hotels for my travels. We have a dog we might take on occasion. My cat allergy causes Anti-phylactic shock IE NOT BREATHING so it is very important for me to know if dogs only, or if pet hotel includes CATS. I am sure I am NOT ALONE. Thanks again for doing this. Would appreciate this site of yours to include even more getailed info as requested above. Thanks.
You aren’t alone. I’ve grown tired of people thinking I’m lying about my anaphylactic allergy to cats (and shellfish). It’s not like I chose it!
Thank you! I’m forwarding this to my husband (he does the hotels for our travels). I have an anaphylactic allergy to cats and also allergic to dogs but not as severely. The hotels we used to use went “pet friendly” and we’ve struggled since then, even being yelled at by a couple of managers. I’m so glad I’m not alone!
I am crying as I read this. I know there’s no guarantee as we stayed at a “no pets allowed” Airbnb this weekend that caused my husband to get no sleep while he sneezed and wheezed all night. It is a nightmare trying to find a place to stay. I ran across your site while I was looking into hotels that do not allow pets this evening because we will no longer take our chances of a self check-in Airbnb again! You are an angel to our travel nightmares!
I always try to book places that have no pets allowed policy. A few years ago I booked a cottage which very clearly stated ‘no pets’. As we arrived the cleaner was just finishing, she opened her car door to leave and out ran her dog. The dog ran straight into the cottage, into every room, jumped on the bed & lay down! My face said it all, the feedback I gave was not polite either. Another time, different cottage obviously, we opened the gate to find the ‘no pets’ was because the owners had two, very large dogs. To be fair they were kept out of our way while we were there, but it was clear they were in and out of the accommodation usually.
Thanks Carol — yes, it’s no surprise how often the owners of “no pets” bed-and-breakfasts have pets of their own who have the run of the place. That’s one reason why I avoid B&Bs in my listings, at least those where it appears that the proprietors live there too.
Any possibility of adding Canada?
I appreciate your interest, but I have my hands full already with USA coverage. I do not use robots to look up this information, so it takes some time.
Well, God bless you all for making this site. Finally!
Too many times we have paid good money, only to have our room smell like dog poop. Yes, a disgusting experience. Here is the problem at hand: the people staying at hotels think they can curtail the $25 fee and not tell the hotel they snuck in their animal, the maid has no clue that a pet pooed on the camouflage carpet, the owners irresponsibly leave their frightened pet in the room while they go to a theme park for the day, the pet thinks the owner has left them for good and poops from the fear.
I have the cat allergy where my throat closes up (more on this at the end) and plenty of pillows have cat smells on them because fluffy got her own bed which the maids think was never used bc it looks made up still. We have requested a pet free room, to no avail. One manager, who said the whole hotel was booked, came to spray a ton of Fabreeze all over the beds, floor, etc. and that made me have a reaction.
Here is what I cannot understand: In a litigious society, why hotels do not have floors designated for pets vs. allergic to pets/no pets? Another lawsuit waiting to happen: when Fido jumps up on another guest with unclipped nails, or bites, etc. a child, etc. And again, if people like us banded together, a class action lawsuit could happen, just saying. It is long overdue.
ADA pets are ok, but everyone is getting emotional support pets to classify as ada.
And now to my cat reference. Boarding an airplane, there was a strong cat stench and my throat was closing in (I’ve never had this happen before on a plane). I immediately told the stowardess I have a cat allergy so that if I went back to my seat, she would know it is a problem if the cat is next to me. Her response, broadcasted loudly: If you want to board the next flight, you are welcome to. She said she cannot tell me if a cat is on the flight -now that seems hokey. And, of course, there would be no guarantee of no cat on the next flight. Appalled that the flight put a higher priority on a cat than a paying customer, I tried to make my complaint to the airline, who in turn told me that my cat allergy was a disability. Now where does that leave us? Back to ADA, and wouldn’t you think I had rights if that’s what they want to call it? Anyway, my point in the airline experience is that this is not just in hotels but on airlines, etc.
Now here is the thing that needs to happen: someone needs to go lobby for people like us to make a fair and equitable world. We need to be acknowledged as having needs. Bringing a pet is not exactly a need most of the time. We deserve filters for searching online and pet-free areas to be in for traveling.
Any lawyers, politicians, evangelists of sorts, please take up our cause!!
Some hotels do have certain designated rooms or floors that are pet-free or pet-friendly. But that doesn’t mean one won’t encounter the pets elsewhere in the hotel, lobby, elevators, etc. — and I doubt that any cleaning staff has separate carts/tools for pet-rooms vs pet-free rooms. So, unless the entire facility is pet-free, it doesn’t matter a lot. What would be good is if hotels at least had designated floors for those with service animals — I would assume the law allows that.