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6 Tips for a Happy, Pet-Friendly Hotel Stay
I LOVE taking my dogs with me on road trips and tend to bring them on practically all of my vacations. They’ve gotten pretty used to being in the car and love exploring new destinations, but it took some time to get them used to sleeping in strange places. Some of you may have seen on our social media pages that we just got back from a mini vacation at Virginia Beach. We had the BEST time! It was also Roxie’s first time staying in a hotel and she did great!
Staying in a hotel can be a bit unnerving for your pet, especially if they don’t do so often. The unfamiliar smells and the sounds of people coming and going can he a bit stressful for some dogs (and cats!). I thought I’d share some tips for any of you who don’t travel with your pets often to help make your pet-friendly hotel stay an enjoyable experience for you AND your pet.
1. Find Pet Friendly Accommodations
While a lot of our trips involve sleeping in a tent, sometimes you just want a nice comfy bed.. and some air conditioning. Okay, and also a shower! There’s a bit of extra planning involved when you travel with a pet, but if you ask me, it’s always worth it! Step 1 is finding a pet-friendly hotel for your vacation.
My mom, my sister and I wanted to do a girl’s trip. Virginia Beach is about halfway between Charlotte, NC (where we live) and where my mom and sister live in Northeast PA. The beach was calling our name, so we started planning a Virginia Beach girl’s getaway. I knew right away what hotel chain I was checking out first, and that was Red Roof Inn. Between our countless long distance moves (Florida to NC, NC to Texas, Texas back to NC) and many multi-day road trips, we have stayed at Red Roof Inns all over the country and here’s why.
They’re clean, comfortable, friendly, affordable, and have over 450 convenient locations. Best of all, they’re SUPER dog friendly. I don’t mean “pet friendly” like some other hotel chains. “Oh yeah, we’re pet friendly, there’s just an extra $50/night pet fee per dog.” Umm.. that’s not very pet friendly?? I’d never be able to travel anywhere with my gang at that rate!
At Red Roof Inn, pets stay free!! Yup, that’s right, FREE!
Hmm.. no pet fee means you have extra spending money for your vacation… I think we’re running low on treats! 😉
Start your vacation days off on the right foot. Wake up refreshed and ready for the day with a good night’s sleep!
2. A Tired Dog is a Happy Dog
While not everything on your vacation itinerary will be dog-friendly, there are always lots of fun things to do and see with your dog in any city or town. Keeping them active and giving them the opportunity to burn off some energy during the day will make for a much easier night in a new place for your pup.
I did some research before we hit the road for Virginia Beach and planned some fun in the sun for us girls, Roxie included. The main beach by the resorts is not dog-friendly during season, but the northern and southern sections of the beach are, plus some local parks. We made sure to spend a good portion of every day in dog-friendly areas where we could bring Roxie along.
One of our favorites were First Landing State Park, which had great trails and low-key dog friendly beaches. Roxie explored the cypress swamps and shorelines and made lots of new dog friends at the beach. We also spent our last morning in the dog-friendly northern section of Virginia Beach, where the dogs ran and played in the surf and had a grand old time.
We got back to the hotel every night salty, sandy, and exhausted. Boy did a shower and a nice comfy bed hit the spot after a long day. Roxie is a bit of a bed hog, but she’s cute, so we let it slide.
3. Rainy Day Backup Plans
If your destination is centered around outdoor activities like the beach, hiking, or sightseeing, a “Plan B” is important. Do some research before your trip and make a list of fun indoor activities in case the weather doesn’t cooperate. Make sure to bring some of your dog’s favorite toys to help keep them from getting restless if you get cooped up in your hotel room during a storm too.
The weather forecast for our trip was not ideal, to say the least. The weatherman called for thunderstorms EVERY DAY during our trip. But we vowed to make the most of it and managed to get in a whole lot of fun in the… sand??? in between storms. I’d say sun, but we really didn’t see any of that until our last day at the beach.
On Saturday afternoon, our rain-dodging luck ran out and we were hit with some pretty intense storms. It down-poured for a good 6 hours or so and we were SO thankful to have a dry place to hang out while we waited for it to pass. We played card games and snacked and Roxie, well, she decided she needed to be right in the middle of the action…. to sleep!
4. Normal Feeding Routine
Just like I’ve mentioned in previous posts about camping with your dog, schedules are important. Much like children, many dogs crave structure and routine. A great way to decrease anxiety is to keep as many things consistent as you can when you’re away from home. I do my best to feed my dogs the same food they eat at home at about the same time, even when we’re on vacation. It doesn’t always happen, but I try. Dogs are creatures of habit and boy do mine know when it’s dinner time!
5. Comforts of Home
One of the easiest ways to make your dog feel comfortable in a new space is to surround them with familiar sights and smells. If they have a dog bed or favorite blanket that they like to sleep on at home, make sure you bring them on your trip. After a long day exploring the area, they’ll welcome a snooze in their own bed. If your dog is crate trained, you can also bring their crate to use when you’re away from the room.
6. Boredom Busters
There will be things that you want to do on your vacation that are just NOT dog friendly. It may be a nice restaurant on the water, an art museum, some shopping, or any other assortment of things that are less than welcoming to our furry friends. For times like these, I bring long lasting treats to help curb anxiety and give my dogs something to do while I’m gone. Some of my personal favorites are quality chews like bully sticks and stuffed Kongs.
Planning an upcoming summer vacation?
Have questions about traveling with your dog? Or maybe other pet hotel stay tips that you’d like to share?
Leave us a comment below, we’d love to hear from you!
Thanks for reading!
Debbie & THE MUTTS
50 Comments
These are really great tips for dog owners to follow when they travel. Since our mom doesn’t travel with us, she never really thought about all the prep that goes into it! We pinned that pic of Roxie because it’s just too cute!
Thank you! And thanks for the pin too. Traveling with pets definitely takes a bit of extra planning, but it’s so worthwhile in the end. My mom is starting to travel with her cats now too. 🙂
These are great tips! Paws up to Red Roof Inn for being so dog friendly so dog owners can take their furry pals along with them. We’ve looked into dog friendly hotels and Inns before and along they may allow them, they have many restrictions such as breed and weight and believe it or not my Goldens are too big for most of them. We will definitely be looking into Red Roof for our next trip, thanks for sharing!
That’s unfortunate! We’ve run into a lot of problems in the past trying to take our dogs on vacation too, which is why it’s so refreshing how dog friendly Red Roof is. Glad you liked our tips too.
I love that Red Roof Inn is so incredibly pet friendly. It looks like Roxie had an amazing, stress-free time on your travels. These are great tips that every dog owner should know.
Thanks Heather! Roxie had an amazing time and we really loved having her with us. She adds a whole lot of sass and fun to everything we do! lol. Glad you liked the tips
Really good advice here! My friend is going on a trip with his dog in a few weeks for the first time ever so I’ll be able to give some good advice thanks to your post 😀
That’s great! I hope your friend finds our tips helpful 🙂 They made Roxie’s first hotel stay a breeze
Definitely great tips! My dogs took some time to get used to sleeping in strange places but now they love it. Red Roof Inn is so pet friendly – not enough hotels like that around! I’m sorry it rained so much, but your photos are so adorable!
Love & Biscuits,
Dogs Luv Us and We Luv Them
It can take some time, especially for pups that are used to sleeping in the same place every night. Bringing some of their belongings from home definitely go a long way. So glad you found our tips relevant. And thank you, the rain stunk but we made it work and still had a blast.
As someone who travels often with a very curious dog who sniffs everything, I can vouch for how useful these tips are. Yay to Red Roof inn for letting pets stay free.
Thanks! That’s great to hear 🙂 And yes, not having a pet fee definitely is a HUGE plus when traveling with pets.
I LOVE Red Roof (and am also an affiliate). I’ve traveled using them several times and in fact will only stay there when I’ve got the dog with me. I’d like to find some dog-friendly stuff in Virginia Beach – I travel through there sometimes and would like to stop.
I never leave my dog alone in the room if I’m not there. I love art galleries so sometimes that’s an issue. Usually I research a local dog boarders and leave him there for a couple of hours. Found a great place in Louisville, KY – will post on that soon.
We’ve had a lot of great experiences with Red Roof as well. I MAY do another post with a bunch of Virginia Beach dog-friendly attractions. Definitely check out the northern section of the beach (above 42nd street is dog friendly and full of awesome pups and pup parents). It’s dog friendly before 10am and after 6pm during the summer season. Also check out First Landing State Park for trails and quiet beaches. Also, the boardwalk is dog friendly during certain times of day and many restaurants are too!
Boarding is a great option if you’re going to be away from the room for a while too. Luckily ours are very used to traveling with us and settle in well when we leave them for short periods of time. I’ll keep an eye out for your Louisville post for sure!
I read somewhere that no dog ever trashed a room as badly as a celebrity LOL Making sure they’re tired and content always helps with that.
Good point on making the dog feel at home; we always take their beds everywhere we go. Cookie is home wherever we and her bed are.
HAHA! I bet that’s true! Too funny. Exercise and something to occupy their time definitely do a long way. That’s great that you bring Cookie’s dog bed with you. We bring at least one dog bed and the pups’ sleeping bags on trips, which they love more than their beds at this point. Ha!
Nice simple tips to make for an enjoyable trip with your dog. I love the fact that Red Roof Inn doesn’t charge extra. That’s a big help especially when traveling on a budget. Love the pics!
Thanks Kamira! You’re right, it doesn’t take much to set your dog up for success in a new place. A bit of normalcy and something to keep them entertained truly do go a long way. Thanks for reading!
This is such a good post, thank you I enjoyed reading it and you have the most stellar pup (good pictures must be in her genes I have not seen a bad one!!)
Red Roof Inn, you guys rock. Having somewhere good to hunker down in bad weahter is as important as somewhere to enjoy at the end of a busy day out and about.
Aww, thanks! She’s a little cutie for sure. She had the best time. It was great having a comfy place to chill between adventures (and during the rain)
I remember one hotel stay that had my dogs wanting to bark at everyone who came by the door. I moved their beds onto the opposite side of the big beds and they felt less obligated to police everyone in town.
That’s a great idea to move their beds! We were thankful that this Red Roof was super quiet. Plus with it being summer time, everyone had their air conditioners running, which made for great white noise.
What fantastic tips and it just makes life so much easier if you want to take your pet with you. I love the idea of taking a bed or blanket of theirs and so true it will give them some feeling of security. I am learning a lot and one day will do a trip with Layla somewhere
I’m so glad that you found our tips helpful. I hope that whenever you guys do venture out on a trip together, you have the absolute best time!
Roxie is just so dang cute! I think the tip for preparing for indoor fun is really important! It can be either boring or anxiety provoking to be cooped up in a strange room. I’ll never forget the absolute joy of getting caught in a huge hail storm with my 5 kids, being soaking wet, cold, and realizing that instead of going to our usual tent, we had a dry little cabin. I guess I’ve just had too many wet tent experiences, but it was a huge thrill for me.
SO TRUE! Boredom is nobody’s friend, human or dog, especially in a new place with potential for anxiety. Sounds like you guys were really lucky to have a nice dry cabin (with a solid roof) during that hail storm. We were thinking the same thing during the crazy thunderstorms this weekend. So thankful to not be in a tent in the rain! 🙂
And thank you, she’s a cutie and she knows it! <3
Those pics of Roxy in bed are adorable! Plush CK stayed in a couple of Red Roof Inns during the long car ride to Myrtle Beach. I’m glad woofies love the water so much. Looks like they had a lot of fun.
Thank you! She’s definitely a cutie. Pretty sure she had an awesome vacation! It’s really nice to have a pet friendly chain you know you can rely on when you’re planning a vacation.
Great tips! It sounds like you all had a wonderful trip! I especially like the tip about the backup plan. When travelling with a dog so much of the plans are about outdoor activities that you forget that the weather may not cooperate. It’s a great idea to have some toys and games ready as a backup plan.
Thanks Mary! Glad you liked our tips. Having a backup plan is SUPER important. If we hadn’t brought toys and chews to keep her occupied, I’m sure Roxie would have gone stir crazy when we were stuck inside due to the rain. Thanks so much for reading.
I haven’t stayed at a hotel with my boys yet… normally when I’ve traveled its been when someone can watch them or they’ve been to doggy daycare but I’d LOVE to take them with me. 🙂 Cute photos too!!
I definitely recommend it. We LOVE vacationing with our dogs. Seeing them have fun and explore new places just makes it that much better of a trip for us too. 🙂
Great info and photos. I’ve never been at a Red Roof Inn, since usually I’m camping when I bring my dogs since they really enjoy that. But sometimes it’s too cold or rainy to camp – and believe me I’ve camped when it was down to 17 degrees and in the snow – the dogs hate it then! How do you keep your dogs from barking when they hear people in the hall or in the parking lot?
We usually camp too! It’s our preferred way to travel. BUT my mom and sister came on this trip with us too and mom is not a tent camping kind of person anymore. Red Roof is definitely a convenient option because they’re all over the place and really pet friendly when temps or circumstances make camping a less fun choice.
As far as noise, we try to get a room upstairs so it’s further from the cars coming and going and we sometimes travel with a white noise machine as well. MOST Red Roofs that we’ve stayed at have been pretty quiet. This time of year, with the air conditioners all running, you really couldn’t hear a thing outside your room. It also helps to put your dogs’ beds towards the inside of the room and you can do some positive reinforcement training, rewarding them for not barking at strange noises outside the room. I hope that’s helpful!
I will keep Red Roof Inn in mind for our next trip! Roxie sure looked like she enjoyed it! Thanks for sharing!
She sure did! It was great to stay at a place that allowed us to bring her with us on vacation. She loved every minute 🙂
Amen to a tired dog being a happy dog!!! These are all fabulous tips.
YESS! Exercise is the answer to SO many dog behavior-related questions.. 🙂
Great tips! I took Sophie to Crested Butte with me about two years ago – the only time we’ve stayed in a hotel/guest house. They advertised that they were pet friendly so fortunately her shenanigans weren’t an issue: jumping on the bed in front of the owners, and barking when I left the room to get ice. She even had a window to watch me get ice but still needed to let me know she didn’t appreciate being left by herself. We need another road trip soon, so I’ll definitely take your advice!
Aww, our pups have moment like that when they are less than happy to see us walk away too. That’s great that you found a pet friendly place to stay with Sophie so you could bring her with you. We’ve stayed in all kinds of places with the dogs and are always looking for pet-friendly options. Red Roof is super convenient because they have so many locations. I hope our tips help on your next trip! Thanks for reading.
I love that Red Roof Inn doesn’t charge extra for pets! That is really hard to find – especially when you have cats. A lot of hotels say that they are “pet-friendly” and then they won’t let you bring a cat. One of these days we’re going to have to try out one of the newer Red Roof Inn locations!
YES! A LOT of places are not cat friendly, which stinks. I understand that they’re afraid of unwanted behaviors ie destruction, but that can happen with dogs too. I imagine that the people who do want to travel with their cats are the responsible ones with cats that are well behaved, just like you hope the same about dog owners. We’ve stayed in hotels with Jasmine before. She is not a fan, but it was a nice option on our long-distance moves. Red Roof has come a long way and they definitely have some nicer, newer locations.
These are really great tips! I LOVE, love, love your highlighted photo! These are adorable!
Thanks Shayla!! She’s a pretty photogenic pup.. and LOVES being tucked in and sleeping under the covers. 🙂 Glad you enjoyed our post
We prefer AirBnB these days. No fees and more freedoms especially when it comes to dining and food prep. But yes, when we do stay at hotels all of these tips are great! I would add bringing a pop up play pen. It allows for a safe space if I MUST “pop” out, or if I can’t focus and want to make sure no damage is done. Not that he ever has. the pop-up takes nearly no room in our carry on and has been very useful. Even in airports during long lay overs…. but I digress. I also bring a sheet. Some hotels don’t want dogs on furniture…HA!
Yes, I agree. We usually use either airBnB or HomeAway for longer trips. I love having the extra space and some property for the dogs too. When we;re traveling long distance or staying in a really popular place though, sometimes a hotel is a cheaper, more convenient option.
HA! I love places that say they’re “dog friendly” but that you can’t have your pet on the furniture. Like that’s gonna happen. We bring an extra blanket or 2 with us for that same reason when we rent houses and cabins. The pop up sounds cool. We did bring Roxie’s small crate for when we weren’t in the room. The other dogs are SO used to traveling and staying in strange places that they just find a couch or bed to snooze on while we’re gone. lol
Fantastic tips! And I love all of your photos! Great idea about having a back-up plan in case of inclement weather. I think sometimes when vacations are planned, that is the farthest thought! Pinning your post!
I haven’t traveled with the girls yet, but I hear my parents’ frustrations when they need to travel with their dog. I’m glad to hear you are satisfied with Red Roof Inn. I’ll definitely share this information about the hotel and your tips with my parents.
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