Hotel pet policies, which brands have no pet fees, tips, & more

Traveling with pets can be awesome, but it can add some hassles and potentially greatly increase your costs.

My wife and I spent 7 years on a 50 state road trip, something we did with our small dog Truffles. In case you’re wondering, she’s a silky-poo: a silky-terrier/poodle mix (that’s one of the most common questions we get).

All that time was spent living in hotels and Airbnbs, so having Truffles with us meant we always had to seek out pet-friendly properties. That greatly reduced how many hotels we could stay at, although there was still a significant number of properties that accept pets.

On a different post, GemGal asked me the following question:

Can you write a post on your experience traveling with pets at multiple hotel brands? Which chains have the best policies and lowest pet fees? Are there consistent pet fees across each brand? Do you seek out specific brands since you’re traveling with a pet? Thanks

I therefore wanted to write this post to answer all those questions and share more tips about traveling with pets.

Something worth noting before continuing: all hotels allow service dogs with no pet fee charged. This post is therefore focusing on the policies when it comes to pets rather than service dogs.

Update 7/12/26: This post has been updated to ensure that all of the pet policies listed in the post are correct and that screenshots still broadly reflect current website functionality on hotel sites. I’ve also added quite a few additional tips and updated the list of hotel brands that are all (or nearly all) pet-friendly seeing as many chains have bought and/or launched new pet-friendly hotel brands in the last few years since this was first published.

Hotel pet policies & pet fees FAQs

Which hotel chains have the best pet policies?

I haven’t been able to find much definitive information as to how many of each chain’s properties are pet-friendly, with the exception of Hilton. Back in June 2022, Hilton announced that the majority of their hotels in the US and Canada would be pet-friendly, meaning more than 4,600 hotels now allow you to bring your pup.

Anecdotally, I’d also say that Hilton is the most pet-friendly of all the major hotel chains. I spent far too much time on our road trip researching our accommodation options in each place and I was always impressed when filtering for pet-friendly hotels on Hilton’s website how many properties remained. If Hilton has 50 hotels in a city, there’s a good chance that only a couple of those won’t accept dogs.

After that, it’s hard to say. Anecdotally again, when considering the sheer number of pet-friendly properties available, Marriott would probably come second. Then it’d likely be IHG and then Hyatt. However, on a percentage basis, I’ve found a larger proportion of Hyatt properties are pet-friendly than IHG.

We stayed far less frequently at Wyndham and Choice properties, but I generally found Wyndham to be very pet-friendly while Choice allows pets at maybe 50% of their properties. Again, this is anecdotal as none of the brands have published information as far as I can tell and no non-incredibly-time-consuming way of gathering data to support my anecdotal observations.

Within chains, there are various brands that are more pet-friendly than others. Most extended stay brands are pet-friendly seeing as people staying there are less likely to want to find someone to look after their dog(s) and/or cat(s) while they’re on an extended stay. Here’s a list of brands where every one of their properties (perhaps with a few exceptions) are pet-friendly:

• IHG
  • Kimpton
  • Candlewood Suites
  • Staybridge Suites
  • Ruby (when selecting WOW rooms)
  • Garner
  • Atwell Suites
• Marriott
  • TownePlace Suites
  • Residence Inn
  • Aloft
  • Element
  • StudioRes
• Hilton
  • Home2 Suites
  • Homewood Suites
  • LivSmart Studios
  • Graduate Hotels
  • To be fair, pretty much all their brands are virtually all pet-friendly in the US
• Hyatt
  • Hyatt House
  • Thompson
  • Hyatt Studios
  • Hyatt Select
  • The Standard
  • Bunkhouse Hotels
• Wyndham
  • La Quinta
  • Waterwalk
  • Hawthorn Extended Stay (I think)
• Sonesta (all brands)
• Motel 6
• Red Roof Inn
• Drury Hotels
• Extended Stay America
• Loews

Which hotel chains have no pet fee?

In the majority of cases pet fees vary from property to property, so there’s not much consistency. There are a few chains and brands that never (or very rarely) charge a pet fee though:

• Kimpton (IHG)
• The Standard (Hyatt)
• Bunkhouse Hotels (Hyatt) (no pet fee when using promo code PACKYOURPUP; this might only be when booking directly rather than via Hyatt)
• Motel 6
• Red Roof Inn
• Graduate Hotels

In the past Aloft (Marriott) and La Quinta (Wyndham) would’ve been added to that list. However, in recent years both of those brands have started charging pet fees at an increasing number of their properties.

How do hotel pet fees work?

There are two main ways that pet fees are charged by hotels: per stay or per night. When hotels charge a fee on a per stay basis, that means you pay a flat rate regardless of how many nights you stay. On a per night basis, you pay a fee for each night you stay.

Both of these methods have their pros and cons. If you’re going to be staying at a hotel for an extended period of time, a ‘per stay’ fee will usually work out in your favor as that reduces the average cost on a nightly basis. ‘Per night’ fees can often be preferable when you’re only staying one or two nights somewhere.

For example, Residence Inn (one of Marriott’s extended stay brands) properties often charge a $100 pet fee per stay. If you’re only staying one night, that’s extortionate and at many properties will likely come close to doubling your room rate for the night. However, if you’re staying for two weeks then that works out to be only $7.14 per night which is far more reasonable.

As an alternative example, some hotels charge a $20 pet fee per night. That’s not bad if you’re only staying somewhere for one night, perhaps as a quick stopover on a road trip somewhere. However, if the hotel charges that fee every night for a two week period, you’re looking at a $280 total pet fee—far more than that $100 per stay fee in the previous example.

Within the ‘per stay’ and ‘per night’ policies there can be some nuance. For example, I’ve found that most Hyatt Place properties are pet-friendly. For those that are, they usually have the following pet fee policy:

• 1-6 nights = $75
• 7-30 nights = $75 + $100 cleaning fee (i.e. $175 total)

So even though they charge a fee per stay, the fee charged can vary based on how long your stay is. Hilton properties tend to do a similar thing. They often charge $xx for 1-4 nights and $xxx for 5+ nights. That can be a little frustrating if you’re taking advantage of Hilton’s 5th night free feature on award stays for those with status as it means you’re stuck paying the higher fee.

There can be similar quirks with ‘per night’ fees. Some hotels charge $xx per night, but place a cap on how much you’ll be charged per stay or per week. For example, they might charge $25 per night, but limit your fee per week or per stay to $125.

Just a quick additional note regarding pet fees: just because a hotel lists a pet fee, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll end up charging one. We had many, many stays where the hotel neglected to charge us a pet fee. Shae and I never hid the fact that we had Truffles with us; in fact, we lifted her up to say hi to the front desk agent to make sure they knew we had a dog with us (this often had the benefit of them giving Truffles a treat). It seemed like some front desk agents simply forgot to add the fee to our room when checking in and we didn’t correct them when getting our final bill upon checking out.

For example, we had a one night stay at a Hilton Garden Inn one time which listed a $75 pet fee. We wouldn’t normally book somewhere with a fee that high for one night, but it was around the corner from somewhere we wanted to walk to that night and so we took a risk. Sure enough, there was no charge listed when checking out.

Do hotels have a limit for how many pets are allowed in a room?

Yes, most pet-friendly hotels will place a limit on how many pets you can have in your room. Even if a limit on the number of pets isn’t stated on a hotel’s website, if you’re traveling with two or more pets it’d be worth contacting the hotel you want to book a stay at to ensure they allow more than one pet in the room.

Do hotels have size/weight restrictions for pets?

Yes, hotels often have size restrictions on the size of pets that they’ll allow. As you might guess based on some of my answers above for other questions, this can vary from property to property, so you’ll need to check a hotel’s specific policy if you have larger pups.

Size restrictions haven’t ever been an issue for us because Truffles is only 10-11 lbs (depending on if she’s carrying any holiday weight). Some hotels might restrict dog weights to 25 lbs, 50 lbs, etc.

As an example, most Hyatt Places that accept dogs seem to allow you to have up to two dogs per room. There’s often a weight limit per dog of 50 lbs, with a combined limit of 75 lbs.

Do pet-friendly hotels allow both cats & dogs?

Not necessarily. If a hotel is pet-friendly then it seems to always allow dogs. I have however seen some hotels stating that cats aren’t allowed to stay at their hotel. If you’re planning on traveling with one or more cats, unless a hotel explicitly states that they accept cats, I’d personally want to play it safe by contacting them ahead of time to verify that cats are indeed allowed in your room.

Is tax charged for hotel pet fees?

It varies by property. Sometimes when a hotel advertises a $75 pet fee that’s the exact amount you’ll be charged. Other times the $75 pet fee becomes closer to $85 due to hotel taxes and fees being applied. I never noted any consistency as to when this happened, but I also never kept track of which brands charged additional tax.

How to find pet-friendly hotels & pet policies for each chain

The procedure for filtering for pet-friendly hotels differs from website to website. Here’s a quick guide for how to find which properties accept pets as well as how to find specific pet policies. Note that these instructions are for when searching on their website on desktop. The procedure when viewing their website on a mobile device or in their app will be similar, but with a slightly different layout.

If you have a specific property in mind that you want to stay at, the quickest and easiest way to find the pet policy will be to google ‘[hotel name] pet policy’. Just be sure to click through to the hotel website to verify the pet policy details; don’t rely on Google’s AI summary overview as that frequently makes up an incorrect answer that doesn’t reflect the hotel’s actual policy.

Hyatt pet policies

To find pet-friendly Hyatt hotels, do an initial search for a city and your dates. On the search results page click on ‘Filter & Sort’.

Scroll down to ‘Hotel Amenities’ and select ‘Pet Friendly’, then click ‘Apply’.

To view the specific pet policy for a property, click on the ‘Hotel Website’ button on the search results page.

On that property’s home page, scroll down and you should come to a section listing the pet policy.

If it doesn’t display the pet policy there, try clicking the menu button and then selecting ‘Hotel Information’ as the details are sometimes displayed there.

Hilton pet policies

To find pet-friendly Hilton hotels, do an initial search for a city and your dates. On the search results page, you might see an option for ‘Pet-Friendly’ under ‘Suggested Filters’, so click on that.

If that suggested filter isn’t listed, click on ‘All Filters’ at the top and scroll down to ‘Hotel Features’, then click on ‘Pet-Friendly’ and then ‘Done’. Note that Hilton allows you to also filter for ‘Pets not allowed’, so make sure you don’t accidentally click the incorrect one!

To view the specific pet policy for a Hilton property, click on ‘Hotel Details’ and then ‘Visit Website’. On that page, scroll down to the ‘Hotel policies’ section and click on the ‘Pets’ tab.

There’s another way to view pet policies on Hilton’s website. If you click through to view room rates, in the top-right corner on desktop you’ll see the hotel’s name and address. Beneath that there’ll be a link for ‘Hotel details’.

Clicking on that will display a popup that shows a number of details including the pet policy, parking fees, check-in & check-out times, etc.

IHG pet policies

To find pet-friendly IHG hotels, do an initial search for a city and your dates. On the search results page, click on ‘Filters’ and then click ‘Pet Friendly’ in the ‘Filter by Amenities’ section and then click ‘Apply’.

Unfortunately this is where IHG makes things far more complicated than other hotel chains. Most other chains have a consistent way of displaying pet policies, but IHG’s method is to switch that up depending on which brand you’re looking at.

For example, when clicking through to a Hotel Indigo property you might see the policy clearly displayed when scrolling down.

For Holiday Inn Express, you might need to scroll down to the ‘Amenities & Services’ section and click on ‘View All Hotel Amenities’. On that page, you’ll hopefully see the pet policy.

For Candlewood Suites, there are a couple of options. One is to scroll down and there’ll be a ‘Pets Welcome’ section. Clicking on that will display the pet policy and fees.

Alternatively, towards the top of the property’s page there’s a link you can click to ‘Print Fact Sheet’.

If you click on that link, it’ll open a new printable window that contains all kinds of information about the property, one part of which is their pet policy and a list of any applicable fees.

IHG has a further way you can often ascertain what a hotel’s pet fee and policy is. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of a property’s home page and you’ll come to an FAQs section. There’s usually a question there relating to pet fees; you might need to click ‘Read More FAQs’ in some instances if it’s not among the first few questions answered.

Marriott pet policies

To find pet-friendly Marriott hotels, do an initial search for a city and your dates. On the search results page, there’ll sometimes be a quick filter at the top of the page where you can choose ‘Pets Welcome’.

If that quick filter isn’t there, click on ‘All Filters’, click the ‘Amenities’ dropdown box, select ‘Pets Welcome’ and then ‘Apply’.

Once you have the list of pet-friendly properties, click through to a property’s page (you’ll need to click the hotel name and then click ‘View Hotel Website’) and scroll down to the ‘Hotel Information’ section which is where the pet policy is usually listed.

Wyndham pet policies

To find pet-friendly Wyndham hotels, do an initial search for a city and your dates. On the search results page, scroll down the page and on the left hand side there’s an ‘Amenities’ section where you can filter for ‘Pet-Friendly’.

To view a hotel’s specific pet policy, click on the property name and then ‘View Policies’

A popup will then appear which displays various policies, one of which is their pet policy.

If you happen to be on the actual page for a hotel, if you scroll down a little you’ll also see a ‘Hotel Policies’ link beneath the TripAdvisor rating and check-in/check-out times.

Choice pet policies

To find pet-friendly Choice hotels, do an initial search for a city and your dates. On the search results page, there’ll often be a quick filter at the top where you can select ‘Pet Friendly’.

If that quick filter isn’t there, click on the ‘All Filters’ button and choose the ‘Pet Friendly’ option in the ‘Amenities’ dropdown.

To view an individual hotel’s specific pet policy, click on the name of the property and scroll all the way down to ‘Essential Details’ where you’ll see the pet fee and any restrictions.

Something important to note with Choice is that many of their hotels have a limited number of pet-friendly rooms. When looking at room types, you’ll often see room types listed as ‘No Pets Allowed’ or ‘Pet-Friendly Room’.

This can be a frustrating situation because it usually results in you having to spend even more beyond just the pet fee. For example, I’ve sometimes found that non-refundable rates don’t have any pet-friendly room types available, instead only being available when booking a flexible rate which means you have to pay more in addition to the pet fee.

Even if there are pet-friendly rooms bookable with the lowest rate type, the pet-friendly rooms might still cost more. For example, in the screenshot above a pet-friendly king room costs $18 (including tax) more per night than its non-pet-friendly counterpart, while a 2 queen bed room costs $19 (including tax) more per night if you want your pup in the room with you. Again, that premium is in addition to whatever pet fee the hotel is charging.

Best Western pet policies

To find pet-friendly Best Western hotels, do an initial search for a city and your dates. On the search results page, select the ‘Pet Friendly’ option from the ‘Amenities’ menu on the left hand side.

To view a hotel’s specific pet policy, click on the hotel name. On the next page, scroll down to (or click the menu item for) ‘Hotel Policies’.

Airbnb pet policies

OK, so Airbnb isn’t a hotel chain, but we did book a large number of stays on the platform and so I figured it’d be helpful to include it here as well.

Airbnb has made a couple of recent improvements to the booking process when you’re traveling with a pet. In the past, you’d have to do a search and then filter for pet-friendly properties. They’ve removed that extra step because you can now include your pet(s) during your initial search when inputting who’ll be staying.

Another positive change is that Airbnb has recently given hosts the ability to include a pet fee that gets rolled into the nightly price. In the past, hosts would sometimes send you a separate invoice through the platform or ask you to Venmo them the money, so having the fee automatically included during the initial booking makes it a much more streamlined process.

As with hotels though, pet policies can vary from Airbnb to Airbnb and sadly there’s not much consistency with how that information is displayed. Some properties don’t have any particular requirements, others have rules like ‘no dogs on the bed or couch’, etc.

To try to find any particular rules, one place to look is in the listing description.

Other times pet policies will be listed in the ‘House Rules’ section which can be found when you scroll to the bottom of the page.

Traveling with pets – hotel tips

After 7.5 years of living in hotels and Airbnbs with our dog—and many other trips with her since then—here are some tips that’ll make your stays more pleasant and hopefully save you money.

Split longer stays into two, with a shorter stay initially

This can be helpful when staying at a property that has a ‘per stay’ pet fee but which charges different amounts based on the length of your stay.

For example, let’s say you want to stay for a fortnight at a Hyatt Place where their pet policy is $75 for 1-6 nights and $175 for stays for 7-30 nights. Staying 14 nights would mean you would—in theory—be liable for a $175 pet fee. However, you could try booking a stay of fewer than 7 nights initially and a second stay for the remaining nights; if a pet fee does get assessed, it’ll hopefully be at the lower $75 rate.

Check out without your pet

When leaving a hotel, my wife usually went back into the hotel to check out while I loaded our car. She left Truffles in the car with me; that way if a pet fee hadn’t been added to our folio, the front desk agent isn’t going to think anything of it.

Pets sensitive to noise? Leave them in the bathroom

Hotels often have rules stating that pets can’t be left unattended in rooms. That’s not something that gets policed, although if you leave your dog in your room all day barking then it will likely become an issue for you.

We don’t worry too much about leaving Truffles unattended, so we’ll go down to breakfast together and leave her in the bathroom. By having her in that separate room with the door closed, she’ll be less likely to hear housekeeping vacuuming in the hallway (a bugbear of hers). We actually have a bit of a routine where we’ll say ‘breakfast time’ and she’ll hop off the bed and run to the bathroom. It probably helps that she usually gets some bacon or breakfast sausage when we get back up to the room.

If we’re in a one bedroom suite, we just leave her in the bedroom as it’s having that separate door that helps make things quieter.

Pets sensitive to noise? Try white noise

Truffles has spent about 2/3 of her life living in hotels, so she’s used to hearing people out in the hallway at hotels. Despite that though, she doesn’t like it when people are particularly loud at night or when she can hear people walking in a room above us.

To help counteract that, it can help to use white noise of some variety. We travel with pretty much everything we own which means our car is tightly packed, so we need another item like a white noise machine like a hole in the head. Instead, we play this ocean waves soundtrack on repeat throughout the night using Spotify.

When leaving Truffles in the bathroom, that’s not always necessary if there’s a loud extractor fan going. If we have a one bedroom suite and we’re leaving her back in the bedroom, we leave the TV on to provide noise that’ll hopefully ensures she doesn’t hear anything out in the hallway.

Ask for a room on the top floor

Hotels will often put guests with pets on the first floor to make it easier to take them outside. That’ll be preferable for many pet owners, but we always prefer to be on the top floor; that way there’s no one stomping around in the room above us.

That’s less of an issue at certain hotel chains though. For example, most Hyatt Places seem to be pretty sturdily built and so we rarely heard people above us when not on the top floor at their hotels. Candlewood Suites on the other hand might as well have cardboard floors for how thin they seem to be and their ability to let you hear footsteps.

Bring a portable dog crate

This is more doable when going on a road trip than when flying, but we love Truffles’ crate for when we’re staying in hotels and will be going out for several hours to somewhere that’s not pet-friendly.

We have the EveryYay Going Places Stow & Go Portable Canvas Dog Crate which you can find on Amazon here (our affiliate link). It folds up and comes in a handy carrier, so it was easy to fit in the backseat of our car. In the photo below, you can see a phone at its base so you can see how thin it gets when folded.

It’s nice and spacious for her when it’s put together too. There’s an opening at the front and another on the side, with a third opening on top so that you can put your pup in from the top too.

We used her crate for the entire seven years of the road trip and it came with us when we moved to the UK. It’s still in great condition considering it got opened and collapsed pretty much every single week during those seven years given how frequently we moved.

Bring your pet’s medical records

Seeing as we were traveling full-time, we had all of Truffles’s medical records with us by default. However, it can be worth taking those with you when traveling with your pup just in case they’re needed.

That could be in the unfortunate event that your pet needs medical attention and whichever vet or animal hospital you take them to wants to see those. Other times, they might be needed if you want to put your dog in doggy daycare for the day while you go out and do some kind of travel-related activity.

There are even some pet-friendly activities where your dog’s medical records might be needed. For example, we went to a few dog bars on the road trip where it’s like a glorified dog park for them and a bar for pet parents. A couple of those required registration and to see medical records (primarily that they had up-to-date rabies vaccinations).

Aging and/or small dog? Bring collapsible stairs

Truffles is fairly small, but in her younger, more spry days she could jump up and down from couches, as well as beds depending on how high up they were. As time progressed though and her arthritis kicked in a little more, we didn’t want her to do that.

Enter dog stairs. You can get these for your home; we now have two sets: one for our bed and one for one of our couches. However, those aren’t overly conducive to travel due to their size, so on the road trip we got a set of collapsible stairs. These are quick to put together and then collapse again, plus they took up far less space in our car than non-collapsible stairs would.

I’m not 100% sure that these dog steps on Amazon (our affiliate link) are the same exact steps that we used for Truffles, but they’re pretty much the same. This is what they looked like in action though:

Decline housekeeping

To prevent housekeeping from knocking on the door and causing Truffles to bark, we always left the ‘Do Not Disturb’ hanger on the door when we were in the room. We’d also leave it there if we were going out and leaving Truffles in the room—whether that’s the bedroom or bathroom—to ensure that housekeeping didn’t enter and both them and Truffles getting surprised.

We never cared much for having housekeeping everyday anyway, so this wasn’t any kind of hardship for us. Shae and I would therefore just stop by the front desk if we wanted fresh towels, more toilet paper, etc. If we ever did want housekeeping, we’d let the front desk know we wanted it before going out for the day with Truffles.

Keep your dog’s leash & harness easily accessible

There were quite a few occasions during our many years living in hotels where fire alarms would go off during the day or night. These always ended up being false alarms, but there was never any way of initially knowing if it was serious or not.

More frequently than not when this happened, it was in the middle of the night. As a result, we’d have to wake up, get dressed quickly, and head outside with Truffles. It was therefore helpful to have a set place in the hotel room where we kept her harness and leash; that way we weren’t searching the room bleary-eyed trying to find them.

We usually left those on the desk or dresser next to the TV. At Hyatt Place properties that are usually designed the same way, we’d tend to leave her leash and harness in one of the cubby holes beneath the TV.

Unrealistic pet fee? Contact the hotel

Pet fee policies are usually straightforwardly listed. However, there are times when it seems like there’s some kind of error. For example, one time a Hyatt hotel listed a pet fee as $100 per night. That seemed absurdly expensive, so I dropped an email to my concierge (I had Globalist status) to ascertain if that was indeed correct. Sure enough, it was a mistake on the website: the correct fee was $100 per stay.

There have been other occasional situations like this, so calling the hotel has always clarified the fee. I always make a note of the person I’ve spoken to just in case there’s some kind of dispute when checking out.

Take screenshots

When booking a stay, I always take screenshots of the pet fee in case the hotel tries charging something different.

Check hotels on Google Street View

If you have any concerns about grassy areas, access to sidewalks, etc. when researching hotel options, using Google Street View can help. It’s often possible to see several sides of the hotel in order to see if there’s much grass, plus it enables you to see what the sidewalk situation is if you want to be able to take your dog on a longer walk.

Offset Hilton pet fees with Amex credits

Several American Express cards offer quarterly credits for Hilton stays:

• The Business Platinum Card® – Up to $50 per quarter
• Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card – Up to $50 per quarter
• Hilton Honors American Express Business Card – Up to $60 per quarter

These credits can sometimes be a bit of a pain to use, especially if you’re booking award stays and you get complimentary breakfast or a food & beverage credit courtesy of having Gold elite status or higher and thus aren’t charging anything to your room.

I’ve therefore found these credits to be useful for pet fees when staying at Hilton properties. In the US, Hilton pet fees are frequently $50 when staying 1-4 nights, so that’d be completely covered by one of those credits. If the pet fee is more expensive than that, it’ll either offset a good chunk of it, or you could ask the front desk to split the cost of the pet fee on two or more cards if you have multiple Amex cards with Hilton quarterly credits.

Reader Tips

Use BringFido.com if you have larger dogs

Becky has shared the following useful tip in the comments:

Pro Tip from a large breed owner: Use bringfido.com to run your initial hotel search. They have a filter for “big dogs” allowed, or other things like multiple pets, low fees, etc. And then once you click through from the main results page to the individual hotel listings, the specific policy is consistently and prominently displayed toward the top of the page. This makes it MUCH faster to narrow down which hotels may work for your needs.

I still have to confirm everything since “big dogs allowed” frequently tops out at 50lbs (I have a ~70lb golden retriever), but it’s a huge time saver to only click through 3-4 hotels to read policies rather than 25.

Question

Do you have any tips you can give other readers when traveling with pets and staying in hotels and Airbnbs? Please share them in the comments below.