Looking for a Pet-Friendly Hotel in NYC

As most of you know, I have two furbabies, Bayles and Bleu.  They are my dog children. Both are very well behaved, and love to travel with me.  There have been so many times that I have settled for “less than nice hotels” just because it was so hard to find one willing to take dogs!  Often, the hotel websites don’t usually make the information readily available. However, Red Roof Inns are always Pet Friendly. So I stopped looking and hunting so hard because I knew I could find a Red Roof Inn nearby. The problem was that the RR Inns are usually farther away from my destination than I would like.

Craig and I always travel to Atlanta to see a band for New Year’s eve.  We meet tons of our friends there.  To keep everyone safe, we drive, we all stay at hotels in the Centennial Park area and are able to walk around and hotel hop.  This year we considered changing it up, and going to see a different band in New York City.

I thought, “oh great!  Another week wasted online hunting for a pet friendly hotel.“  and this time I thought it was going to be so much worse.  I know nothing about New York City so I braced myself for a long and painful search. I was already anxious – not about crime, but worried about getting lost! Or losing a dog! eek!

Then via Oyster Hotel Reviews, I found out that there at a total of  86 hotels in New York city that are pet friendly.  All I had to do then, was plug in what area of New York we wanted to be near, or actually stay in, and bam. I was hit with a list of the hotels.  So I found out where the Beacon Theater is, and plugged in the “upper west side.”

Now comes the decisions.  Do I want to stay at a the Mandarin Oriental that, for one night, will cost me more than twice my mortgage?  Or do I automatically go into my frugalista mode, and pick the least expensive, On the Ave?

Of course we aren’t going to pay $1,000 for each night.  I don’t even think if I struck it rich I could do that.  So really it came down to On the Ave at 3 1/2 stars and the Empire Hotel at 4 stars, but also $75 more.  So now that I am aware of the stars, I checked out the reviews and the amenities.

The only cons of On the Ave were steep internet charges of $13 a day, and a clunky old elevator.  To save myself $75, I am thinking I can live with that.   The Empire Hotel has quite a few notches against it in the review department. Small standard rooms, noisy parties in the lobby, loud traffic outside and one that wouldn’t both us, pool often closed to private parties.  That settled it, I didn’t even need to look at the pros.  We wouldn’t be spending much time at the hotel anyway!

How simple did that make it?  When Craig and I sat down a few weeks back to pull the trigger make the reservation, we got a few frantic phone calls from friends.  All of them basically telling us how much they would miss us, and that we just HAD to come to Atlanta, and no way should we go to New York.  This ended up being the only hard choice.

We realized very quickly how much we would miss our trip, and our friends, and of course seeing Widespread Panic.  We were trying to do something new, and were excited about the NYC atmosphere, and seeing Govt Mule, but that trade-off wasn’t going to be worth it.  Our reunion with good friends is the biggest draw for traveling to Atlanta and, the best part is we already know where to stay.

Images and information all found on Oyster.com.

Karissa Gindling™ for Prissy Green™ ©

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