BE AWARE: $150 PER PET FEE
We booked our room at WhyHotel for a one night getaway from home after a difficult spring. It was a bit of a splurge, but we were feeling down enough that a little budget-breaking seemed worthwhile. We were especially happy that we could bring our two dogs with us, as we specified in our reservation. We were pleased to find that the apartment was just as chic and clean as it appeared in the pictures and that the staff was helpful and kind. Communication was quick and, while it’s true that using the app makes check-in a bit complicated (hint: don’t take their suggestion to call for parking right before you arrive; do it a little bit ahead, like 30 minutes), it was fine once we got the hang of it.
What was not a pleasant surprise was finding, after we had made a non-refundable reservation, that WhyHotel charges a $150 per pet cleaning fee. It’s not the fee itself that bothers me - while it’s higher than most I’ve seen, it is not unreasonable. My main gripe is that right at the outset of making our reservation, we specified “3 adults, 2 pets” and nothing anywhere indicated that we would have to pay this fee. (We later found it buried in the House Rules, but you have to dig to find those and can make a reservation without ever seeing them.). Of course, this is partly our fault. In retrospect, I realize that I should have assumed there would be a pet fee. However, because this fee almost doubled the cost of our one-night stay, I feel that AirBnB or WhyHotel should have included it in the fees we saw when we made the reservation. That would at least have allowed us to know the full cost of our (as it turns out very expensive) staycation so we could decide whether or not it made sense for us to book such a costly stay, leave our dogs at home, etc.
I get the sense that most people booking with WhyHotel are doing long-term stays with their families, so paying $150 for a week or a month isn’t a big deal, especially if kenneling is your only other option. For a one night visit with two pets, it’s a huge added expense, and one I would have appreciated seeing more explicitly before I booked.