Staying in a Travelodge with a dog

My husband and I, along with Hetty our cockapoo, recently stayed in a Travelodge in Harrogate. My husband had been to Harrogate a few months previously and found it to be a beautiful town. He knew I would love it. There was a Travelodge right in the centre of town. We know you can take dogs to Travelodges, so he booked it for a wedding anniversary weekend away.

At this point, I should say he did know there was no air conditioning in the room. It was a very silly thing to do to book a room without air conditioning in July. But he obviously couldn’t have predicted we would be in the midst of UK heatwave number three of 2026.

I should also say we’ve had a couple of negative Travelodge experiences before where the rooms have been too hot – one on the outskirts of Manchester and one in Faringdon in London. Both times were in July.

Our room was on the fourth (top) floor and facing out onto the street. We walked in and it felt like an oven! The heat was unbearable. There was a fan already running and the window was open a crack, because that’s all you can open a hotel window. The window was actually made up of two sets of windows – one set opening inwards which can open fully and the other set which open outwards which only opens a couple of centimetres. There was no breeze and no way of letting the air flow through the room.

The other thing I noticed almost straightaway is that our hotel appeared to be in the party area of town. When I mentioned this on social media, a lot of people questioned it. A party area in Harrogate?! Oh yes, it’s on The Ginnel. Surrounding the Travelodge.

There was a bar directly below the hotel and one next door. There was one opposite, with an outdoor seating area and one diagonally opposite with an outdoor seating area.

We went out for the evening to get something to eat and do a recce for parkrun the following day. And then we went back to our room. It was still stiflingly hot (I would guess around 34 or 35 degrees), but now it was also REALLY NOISY.

There was music. There was talking. There was shouting. There was screaming. And it went on and on and on. I managed to fall asleep at about 1. But my husband and Hetty were pacing the room, unable to settle. They were disturbing me of course.

My husband threatened to go and sleep in his car with Hetty, but of course I was worried about them dying in a hot car. I fantasised about going and sleeping on a park bench. I wondered if I could sleep in the bath in just a little bit of cold water without drowning. Even the corridor was cooler than our room. Maybe I could just lie down there?

My husband got another fan from reception, but it didn’t make much difference. He went to reception again to ask if there was any way of opening the window wider. Of course there wouldn’t have been. But there was nobody in reception anyway. He was on booking.com at 2am looking for an alternative hotel.

Hetty was panting in the heat and still the shouting and screaming carried on. It felt like being trapped in hell. My husband eventually blocked out the noise for himself with his AirPods and said when he woke again at 4am it was all quiet.

He complained the next day and the receptionist said everyone complains and we just have to leave a negative view and eventually maybe they will install air conditioning. My husband asked if having a room on a lower floor would make a difference, but the receptionist said it wouldn’t. A room at the back of the hotel might have helped with the noise. There is a Wetherspoons beer garden directly behind it, but Wetherspoons closes earlier than some places.

We had a lovely Saturday and tried to put the night time problems to the back of our minds, but we knew they would be back on Saturday night. In fact, the noise would be even worse, because England were playing in the quarter finals of the World Cup.

It was so hot that we just sat in our underwear. And the noise was even worse than ever. I worried about Hetty and how much she was panting. I’ve read it all before, but I was still frantically googling how to keep a dog cool and signs of heatstroke in dogs.

Because of the football, I stayed awake until 1am, then fell asleep reasonably easily afterwards, despite the noise and despite the heat. It took my husband longer to fall asleep again, but actively staying awake for longer meant the night was slightly less stressful.

We were very happy to pack up and get in our air conditioned car to drive home on Sunday.

It’s good that Travelodge allows dogs to stay, but sadly a hotel that hot is neither dog friendly or human friendly. We won’t be back.