Clean, friendly staff - pet owners should know some things up front
28/10/2019 rweintothewoodsyet, Fairbanks, Alaska
If you're staying here without pets, my review won't say much for you. I stayed here as my first stay on a road trip from Saint Paul, MN through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska. It was the first time my h... more
If you're staying here without pets, my review won't say much for you. I stayed here as my first stay on a road trip from Saint Paul, MN through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska. It was the first time my husband and I had stayed at hotels with our dogs. I see other reviewers have mentioned pet policies and some say they aren't unreasonable. I reserved my room through Expedia and think it was non-refundable, so I was pretty committed when I got to the hotel. Had we known the pet rules, we wouldn't have reserved a room here. For others who may be in our situation, dog owners may want to know a bit more about the pet rules. Everyone fits their dog into their family and trains it differently than the next, so the rules may be fine and reasonable for some but problematic for others. We found the rules problematic, but again - take this with a grain of salt as this may not apply to you.
Our dogs are our babies. They are allowed to play together on the bed and they sleep on the bed with us at home. We didn't anticipate when we got our dogs that we would need to take a road trip to Alaska in the early winter (when camping is less of an option). So, we arrive with our dogs at this hotel at night to check in with our non-refundable reservation. They ask me to sign a list of pet policies, which in itself is fine. The problem is that I hadn't seen those policies anywhere when I decided to purchase a night at the hotel. Pets aren't allowed on the beds and if dogs shed in the bed an extra fee can be charged. Dogs aren't allowed in the lobby, so we have to enter through a different door. The other rules are more standard for our life, like pick up after them in the designated pet area outside. Entering through a different entrance was easy enough to follow, but all the rules together made it feel like pets are only welcome if they are hidden away and invisible.
My experience is that you generally can't train a dog instantaneously to stay off the bed if your dog is accustomed to being allowed/welcomed on the bed. Even if you can, a hotel is a less welcoming place to be if you have to be vigilant about training/maintaining these new boundaries with your dog.
I don't mean to complain, honestly. My point is to say that it would be great if the hotel would make their rules about pets more transparent for people like us to find online. That would help people like us be good guests who are informed when they pay their money to stay here. We wanted to be good guests but in the end honestly were not able to keep our dogs off the bed at this place. Don't get me wrong, hotels get to set the rules. We simply wouldn't have stayed here if we had known that one particular rule. less