If you're headed over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house for a holiday celebration, you can be fairly sure your children will be welcome. You can be almost as confident if you're headed through the woods to a major chain hotel. In Nevada, Hawaii and Maryland, for instance, industry officials say state laws give hoteliers leeway to exclude children as long as they enforce their restrictions consistently. If you need this information, you may be able to find it by trolling the Internet or by checking with state government agencies or a statewide lodging trade group. Most hotels, of course, welcome guests with children.
Different hotels handle the issue in different ways.
For that month, the hotel suspends its children's meal and activity programs and its special rates for children staying in a room with their parents, a Kona Village reservations operator said. But, she added, it isn't an outright ban. In the offices of Hawaii's state Civil Rights Commission, executive director Bill Hoshijo noted that the state's civil rights law governing public accommodations bans discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, ancestry or disability. California is among the states with laws that more broadly prevent lodgings from turning away families with children. As a result, lodgings often develop code words to indicate just how welcome children are.