Devoted to a Pet? Don’t Leave Home Without It

As plans for the annual family vacation begin to take shape, pet owners start to think about what to do with their animals. Last year about 14% of American adults said they recently had taken their pets on trips, according to a survey by the Travel Industry Assn. of America. More than three-quarters of them took the dog, 15% took the cat and the rest took birds or other creatures.

“More people are traveling with dogs than ever before,” says Robyn Peters, owner of the bimonthly newsletter Doggone ($25 per year; [888] 364-8728, www.doggonefun.com), which provides subscribers with 33,000 listings of hotels and other places that accept dogs.

The Internet site www.dogfriendly.com, which lists hundreds of pet-welcoming hotels, parks, attractions and restaurants in the U.S. and Canada, is averaging 1.5 to 2 million hits a month this year, up from about 1 million a month last year, says Tara Kain, its president. “Traveling With Your Pet,” an annual compendium of pet-loving lodgings, is one of AAA’s top three retail titles, a spokeswoman said.

Furthermore, pet owners are begging for information on where to take their animals. No wonder.

Overall, fewer U.S. hotels are accepting pets--about 40% last year, compared with nearly 60% in 1990, according to the 2001 Lodging Survey that Smith Travel Research did for the American Hotel & Lodging Assn. Bowser’s best odds are at budget hotels (60%), the worst at luxury lodgings (33%). About a third of AAA-rated lodgings are identified as pet friendly. But numbers don’t tell the whole story.

“The mom-and-pop places and bed-and-breakfast inns are becoming more pet friendly” because they see it as a niche market, says Chris Kingsley, president and co-owner of www.petswelcome.com. (His site lists more than 14,000 animal-friendly hotels and B&Bs; in North America and also hosts a lively bulletin board.)

Newsletter owner Peters notes that although big chain hotels seem less willing to host dogs, several companies, including Loews, Kimpton and Ritz-Carlton, have a reputation for being pet friendly. Various Kimpton hotels offer doggie treats, dog-walking city maps and videos such as (I’m not making this up) “Non-Stop Kittens.” Some Loews hotels even have room service menus for pets.

However you choose to search for pet-friendly facilities, “always call first,” Peters says, because policies seem to change almost hourly. Kingsley says he gets about 60 e-mails a week from places wanting to be added to the www.petswelcome.com listings and maybe 10 asking to be removed.

“Friendly” may not mean “free.” Nearly a third of hotels charge extra for pets, according to the 2001 Lodging Survey; some require a refundable deposit of up to $250.

Many hotels also require that the pet never be left alone in the room--a Catch-22 if you want to go to a movie or a restaurant that doesn’t allow pets. Fortunately, pet-sitting is a growing field, Kingsley says. His site lists thousands of pet sitters, as do sites such as www.petsitters.org, maintained by the National Assn. of Professional Pet Sitters. On its useful toll-free phone, (800) 296-PETS (296-7387), you can locate NAPPS members by ZIP Code.

As for getting there, traveling with pets still means hitting the road for most of us. About 87% of people who traveled with pets took a car or an RV, and only 6% took a plane, the Travel Industry Assn. found. That’s partly because pet travel by air can be daunting.

Let’s start with airline policies. “They change frequently, and there’s no consistency from one airline to another,” Peters says.

And the rules are complicated. On April 18, Northwest’s rules took up 15 pages on its Internet site, www.nwa.com, and specified age limits (at least 8 weeks old), sizes of kennels that may be put under a passenger seat (a maximum of 17 by 12.3 by 8 inches), weight limits for pets sent as checked baggage (less than 100 pounds for domestic, 150 pounds for international travel) and much more.

In a restriction common to airlines, it bans so-called brachycephalic (snub-nosed) dogs and cats as cargo or checked baggage when temperatures exceed a certain level, in this case 75 degrees “at any point on the planned itinerary.” Delta’s policy uses 70 degrees as the cutoff and lists 22 breeds of dogs and four breeds of cats that are no-goes.

Northwest won’t accept any animals as baggage or cargo if temperatures on the itinerary are forecast to exceed 85 degrees or drop below 10 degrees. Delta won’t check pets as baggage from May 15 through Sept. 15; they can, however, be shipped as cargo as long as temperatures are 85 degrees or cooler. Add airline partners and it gets truly byzantine: Delta’s partner Aeromexico forbids pets in the passenger cabin “at all times,” Delta says. Continental won’t transport American pit bull terriers at all, its Web site says.

Fees vary widely too, and they have increased in the last two years. Pets traveling in the cabin or as checked baggage typically cost about $75 each way. Continental, which doesn’t accept animals as checked baggage (but does allow them in the cabin), requires the pets to use a special cargo program at rates from $89 to $299 one way, depending on weight.

The other issue with pets traveling as cargo or checked baggage is safety. This is passionately debated. Animal activists like Lisa Weisberg, senior vice president for government affairs and public policy of the ASPCA, insist such travel is risky; she goes so far as to say “you’re really playing Russian roulette with your animal.”

The Air Transport Assn. says such travel is safe, and baggage compartments that hold pets are pressurized and heated. As for deaths of animals in cargo, “those incidents are so rare, any time it happens it’s headline news,” says ATA spokeswoman Diana Cronan. No one is collecting current data on this, even though a federal law passed in 2000 requires that airlines report statistics on animal injuries and deaths to the Federal Aviation Administration. Rules drafted last fall by the FAA to implement this requirement are still under review.

The frustrations of air travel have led Florida entrepreneurs Rick and Diana Roof (that’s really their name) to plan a small airline that would let pets ride in the passenger compartment with their owners. The Roofs are seeking financing to launch Companion Air, www.companionair.com, using leased or purchased turboprops. They hope to start flights from the Southland; no date has been set.

For right now, though, I offer the “Canine Commitment Ceremony Package” at the Caliente Tropics Resort in Palm Springs, (760) 327-1391, www.calientetropics.com. For $275 per room and up, two pets in love can don veil and bow tie, slurp sparkling water and receive a commitment certificate, says managing partner Charlie Robles.

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Write Jane Engle at Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.