Finding pet-friendly lodgings
When traveling with pets, here are sites that work
If you're traveling with pets and need a place or places to stay, these web sites can provide hotel info, rates and reviews, as well as travel tips.
Finding pet-friendly lodgings is perhaps the most maddening aspect of road-tripping with your favorite critter. As anyone who has traveled with animals can tell you, even finding a hotel that accepts pets can be a chore. Now throw in clean rooms, no fleas and plenty of open areas for doggie-business, and you might as well wish for a pile of gold. Attempting a ride-along with Fido without prior planning is like trying to stay dry in a rainstorm using a collander.
If you haven't forgotten to plan ahead, perhaps the best site on the net is LetsGoPets.com. Besides finding pet-friendly hotels, it offers a star-type rating system, guest feedback and room rates. Like other pet hotel search engines, it also offers travel tips, but this site's tips are fairly comprehensive and include car traveling tips, an explanation of airline pet policies and an extremely helpful list of international pet travel regulations. Be sure to read the reviews, however, and be sure to heed the ratings. There's nothing worse than planning a trip around a specific hotel and having to flee that hotel because you didn't read the warnings and found out it was run by thugs.
One of the best perks of LetsGoPets.com, however, is the new "roadside hotels" search engine, which allows the user to cross-index highways and interstates with states or provinces to find all the pet-friendly hotels along the stretch of roadway they are planning to traverse. It's a useful tool when planning trips, but don't expect to use it out on the road, unless a PC Card for a laptop is present. LetsGoPets.com doesn't have a special mobile site for on-the-road travelers.
For travelers who have forgotten to plan, but didn't forget their mobile phone, PetsWelcome.com offers one of the few mobile-friendly search engines for pet-friendly hotels. The service is bare-bones, but it is free and it gets the job done (if your device doesn't support frames, however, you may be out of luck). It also offers turn-by-turn directions. If searching by city, you can expect room rates, amenities listings and policies, which can be helpful when information is needed quickly. Don't expect room reviews or ratings, though. Just finding a room in that situation should be enough.
While each pet-hotel search site offers its own unique pluses, LetsGoPets.com and PetsWelcome.com are two you might find useful when you and your furry friends hit the open road.
