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Pet project puts accent on luxury

Hotel Balto in Vaudreuil-Dorion won't let your pooch ruff it – not in the royal suite at $99 per night

DAVID JOHNSTON
The Gazette
Sunday, April 5, 2009

When a luxury hotel for dogs and cats opened last fall in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec’s fastest-growing municipality, some people in the neighbourhood rolled their eyes at what they saw as entrepreneurial folly.
The thought of people paying up to $99 a night to have their dogs sleep in a room with a bed and a wall-mounted plasma TV seemed preposterous – especially with an economic recession on the horizon.
But Hotel Balto on Harwood Blvd. came through this year’s spring-break week boasting an impressive 80 per cent occupancy rate for its 36 rooms.
And on a recent weekday, with kids back at school and families returning to their normal routine, there were nine dogs and cats registered as guests when a reporter visited on short notice.
“The feedback has been really good,” said hotel manager Mélanie Harbec, who works the day shift behind the check-in desk in the chic lobby.
Hotel Balto is owned by
Diane Lévesque, who also owns a busy local construction company, Construction Nordi. That firm has played a major role in the growth of housing in Vaudreuil-Dorion and other suburbs west of Montreal Island.
Lévesque has built Hotel Balto on the north side of Harwood, the main street in the former town of Dorion. Harwood is also part of Highway 20, so thousands of cars and trucks pass by every day. The Balto is situated at the first intersection with traffic lights that you come to in Dorion as you head west from Montreal.
The inn sits on the same corner of Harwood and St. Henri St. that was locally famous for decades as the site of the greasy spoon La Patate à Serge. But there’s nothing down-market about Hotel Balto, as reflected in its faux art deco exterior architecture.
The white Ford Flex pet limousine in the parking lot is another sign this is not a standard kennel.
The limo isn’t just a visual prop. People who want to have their pets picked up at home and whisked away in high style for a stay at the Balto can hire the limo for a flat $50 fee for a pickup within a 30-kilometre radius of the hotel, a territory that includes Trudeau airport in Dorval. Longer excursions cost extra.
The Balto has 27 rooms and nine smaller “lofts.” The accommodations range in size from a conventional residential bathroom to a standard shower stall. Two rooms and all the lofts are reserved for cats; prices range from $99 a night for the dog royal suite to $29 for a loft; rooms start at $49. All the rooms, but none of the lofts, come with wall-mounted plasma TVs.
The ambient TV sound helps the animals feel at home, Harbec says.
Night supervisor Suzanne Thériault says that as she sits behind the front desk in the lobby, she can see into every room and loft via a video-surveillance TV screen in front of her. If an animal appears to be agitated, she says, she’ll go up to the second floor or down into the basement – where the rooms and lofts are situated – and try to calm them with soothing words and petting.
When morning comes, groomer Melissa Boake arrives to provide services to the four-legged guests as requested by their masters, including nail polishing. The most popular nail colour, she says, is “hot pink – but with sparkles; the sparkles add a little texture.”
As well, the canine guests are walked six times a day.
All this expensive fawning over domestic animals is certainly not the norm; ordinary kennels still dominate the market for animal accommodations. But people who work regularly with pets say they are not surprised to hear that Hotel Balto has found a measure of success in the luxury niche market – especially given the worsening economy.
“For a lot of people, pets are like children – and for older people who live alone, pets are sometimes their main form of companionship,” said Annie Provencher, an administrator with the École internationale de zoothérapie.
The school, based in  Notre Dame de Grâce and affiliated with the Université de Montréal, trains people and animals to provide support services to physiotherapists and occupational therapists.
“You’d be surprised who the clients are – they’re not all rich, like you might think,” Harbec said. “They come from all walks of society.
“For sure, if you lose your job, you’re not going to be placing your pet with us. But as long as you still have your job, you’re probably going to continue to come to us, if we’re what you want.”
Hotel Balto’s website is www.hotelbalto.com