People who don’t like pets like them even less at $400 a night.
In a bid to attract pet owners, hotels have been welcoming pets in greater numbers in recent years. Nearly half of U.S. hotels accept pets, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s 2006 annual survey, up from about 30% 10 years ago. Many now offer elaborate pet-friendly perks, from “canine cocktail hours” at the Hotel Indigo chain to “rover relaxation massages” at Peninsula Hotels.
But the rising acceptance of pets in hotels is pitting the 63% of U.S. households that own pets against the estimated 17% of the U.S population that tests positive to cat or dog allergens. As the popularity of pet programs has grown, many hotels have stopped keeping track of which rooms pets have been in.
Now, guests with allergies, asthma and pet aversions are finding themselves in beds where animals have slept the night before, or on elevators with dogs that they fear will slobber or shed on their clothes. One big issue is lack of consistent information on what rooms allow pets or where pets have stayed. Cleaning procedures for rooms that have had pets in them also vary widely among hotels. As a result, some travelers with high sensitivity to pets are becoming amateur detectives, trying to keep track of hotels’ animal policies and sniff out rooms where pets may have been ahead of time.
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Reliable information can be hard for guests to pin down. A reservation agent for the Park Hyatt Washington said last month that there were “definitely” pet-free rooms available, but a hotel spokeswoman says this is incorrect: Pets are allowed in every room. Agents for the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park in Manhattan say they can request pet-free rooms for guests, but the front desk says they have no record of where pets have.
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Gary Phelan, a disability lawyer with the firm Outten & Golden LLP, says there’s no law requiring hotels to offer pet-free rooms, but that people with severe asthma and allergies have qualified as disabled under the act on rare occasions. The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual,” and breathing is considered a major life activity, says Mr. Phelan.
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Some 50 million Americans suffer from allergies, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation, and the second most common (after pollen) is to animal dander — tiny flakes of skin, hair and dried saliva that float in the air and cannot be removed from a room by steam-cleaning the carpets or hand-washing the walls. For severe and can be life-threatening without proper medications, allergists say.
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