Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Many hotels and motels are small businesses (usually franchisees) that are low margin, low volume, they can't just eat the costs, which are also not equal the price of the room rate.

A disruptive pet can cause you to have to refund multiple other rooms, and potential loss of future business too. A disruptive pet can cause physical damage to the room far in excess of the room rate. We once had a pet ruin the carpet so bad the room was not able to be sold for weeks, even after multiple carpet shampoos.

And you also can't go after the hotel guests to recoup costs because the legal fees are hefty and the probability of winning the case, the defendants having money, and actually paying the money are all very low.

Obviously all of this is true for disruptive people too, it's just that pets add another risk. Personally, after what I've seen, I would pay extra to be able to stay at a hotel that could guarantee it never had any pets stay.



Don't allow pets? Service animals are not pets. And service animals can be removed from a business for being disruptive.

> they can't just eat the costs, which are also not equal the price of the room rate

Amortize the costs does not mean eat the costs, it means bake them into the base rate.


I meant any animals, it’s a personal preference. I know how well hotel rooms get cleaned, and I’d rather take my chances with rooms that haven’t had animals.

It’s also not that simple for smaller business to amortize the costs since the pricing has to be competitive with larger businesses that can amortize over more rooms, so a lot of times, the business does have to eat it. It’s also a very unpredictable cost with high variance.


We're talking about fake service animals, which pretty much are pets ;)




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: