Accommodation Books

This little book of recommended "special places to stay" lacks many special places. It gives very good information on the places it does mention, but leaves out many areas. I didn't find it worth my money at all.

I had great hopes for this book, as I'm always on the look out for fun places to take my dog. Anticipating a cross-country trip during Summer 2000, I ordered it to help plan that trip. Unfortunately, it did not prove very useful. Although it covers the whole US, the information is typically too sketchy to be of use. Hotel descriptions, for example, typically consist of nothing more than name, address, and phone number. At best, there is a rudimentary indication of amenities using letter codes, although many listings lack them. In some cases, the listing does not even include an address or merely includes a PO Box. Based on the listings for Southern California, the part of the country I know best, some of the information is incomplete or inaccurate. In listing California dog parks (pp. 231-32), for example, Walters omits two well-known Los Angeles parks. In sum, not recommended.

The Authors are experienced home exchangers and did a great job writing this book in 1991. They surveyed over 500 exchangers to get their information and stories. The problem with the book is that the Internet has completely changed Home Exchange, as has the availability of technology such as cell phones and personal computers. If you want to read entertaining essays and stories about home exchanges between 1960 and 1990 and want to understand the pre-Internet home exchange world this is an entertaining book. The cartoons are amusing.

This book suffers from the flaw of being written in the painfully florid style of pr travel pieces. I am also a little suspicious that the writers do not have a critical word about a single one of these inns, hotels and motels that take dogs. Did they actually go to any of them?? I have my doubts. Aware of at least one gross factual error -- in review of a B&B in Chapel Hill, NC, it suggests that you visit the "nearby" Great Smoky Mountins, which are at least three hours' drive away. I have not actually tried to go to any of the listed places with my dog, so I cannot say if the work is entirely fictional. However, I think this book is an excellent concept and look forward to seeing better editing and fact-checking in future editions.

Having tried three of the "recommendations" and living close to a fourth, I can only say this work is more fantasy than fact. We were turned away from one "pet-friendly" place when they found out that our small Boston Terrier was not a cat.

I bought Pets Welcome, but after using it I have the impression that the authors didn't travel at all to write it. We traveled to inns that didn't reflect the descriptions at all. The Fish's reviews are essentially taken from the brochures, with perhaps one or two additional facts. I can read a brochure or check a web site for the innkeeper's perspectives, but I depend on travel guides for firsthand experiences of the authors. I was dissapointed with Pets Welcome guide because it merely pointed me in the right direction without giving me any insight.

This book does not incorporate any standards of rating, allowing for no quantitative comparison of any aspect between properties. Instead the authors rely heavily on flowery, subjective descriptions. There are also no photos in this book, save the color advertising inserts, (Amex, Fordors, and MCI). But the biggest blunder this book makes is that none of the 342 properties are ever shown on a map!! Since the book organizes them alphabetically by area, its virtually useless as a reference guide. All in all; this book obviously required a lot of resources and research to produce. It seems ridiculous that it could somehow still fail so miserably to deliver.

This guide was not useful to us at all on our recent trip to Maine. We traveled from Portland north to Bar Harbor over the course of 8 days, using Frommer's New England, Fodor's New England, and this guide, as well as the AAA tourbook. This guide is organized alphabetically by the name of the B&B; if you want to find something by location, which is how most of us travel, you have to dig through the cross-reference in the second index in the back of the book. It also fails to make recommendations, merely describing a series of lodging choices in vague terms that leave you wondering what you might be getting into. The book lists positive quotes from other reveiwers on its back cover. I don't know how these were solicited, if the reviewers even read the book, they obviously knew nothing about New England.

The book was lacking both in format and content. The first thing I looked for was the index which was a waste of time since there wasn't one! Then I looked for the first state that I was interested in researching and discovered it wasn't listed. Only a select few hotels are listed in any detail with some states fairly well represented and others VERY sparse or non-existent. Numerous hotels are listed in the back under "more all suite hotels" but these listings are only one line and give you an address and phone number only. The cover says the book lists over 1200 hotels and includes a full description of the hotel's facilities and prices (this is what I thought I was buying), but this sure wasn't the case!

If your looking for an extensive reprinting of 1995 tax forms and instructions, or a handy glossary of definitions such as "Internal Revenue Service", "Deed", "Will" and even the always confusing multi-syllabic "Representative", you'll find it here in spades. Of the 284 pages in the book, the first 111 is full of boilerplate advice that you might get free from the IRS, the remaining 173 pages is reprints of IRS forms, their instructions, and the glossary.

Don't expect to receive what the cover promises. A disclaimer in the second paragraph of the "How To Use This Book" section sums it all up, "Although not every establishment is owned or operated by Christians, each host has expressed a desire to welcome Christian travelers." Let me paraphrase: Let's publish a book that contains no new information but is aimed at a new group with growing numbers thereby increasing our sales without doing any work. DON'T DO IT.

My wife and purchased this book as a guide to our March, 2000 trip to England. Many of the listings are out of date due to the rapid changes in restaurant and accomodations businesses. (The book was published in 1995 so the information is about 6 years old.)

The listings in the book are almost exclusively vegetarian restaurants so if you have a hankering for something that had a face (as my son's vegan ex-girlfriend put it) you'd do better to call ahead and reserve a table "as far from the smoking area as possible"

Thankfully many Londoners and the folks we met on our tours of the countryside have cut back on smoking. There are places where you can expect to get a blast of the nasty (Underground exits, storefronts, and in milling crowds at rush hour). Some of the places really are disappointing (Vendors at the National Home and Garden Show smoked on the arena floor.) The book is silent on these important points.

Happily all of the larger hotels I contacted had nonsmoking accomodations. Their numbers can be secured from a website such as www.lastminute.com or other broker.

While our trips to the countryside were too few to give a realistic trial of the merits of the book it did seem the author's information might be more accurate once well outside London because things don't change as fast in these areas.

In sum, significant decreases in the practice of smoking in public and enclosed places have rendered this 1995 guide well out of date.

I bought this book to travel the US, and almost every time I tried to use it I found that the phone numbers were not valid. I gave up and just stayed at national major chain motels - virtually all take pets and the quality was better than those listed in this book. Save your money.