Rome airport opens luxurious dog hotel
FIUMICINO, ITALY—Dog owners often face a dilemma before traveling: leave your beloved pet with a sitter or at a kennel? Both require quite some planning and logistics, which can be stressful and time-consuming for fur parents.
Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport has sought to streamline the process by opening one of the first on-site hotels at a major European airport, following a similar initiative in Frankfurt. Dog Relais’ workers even retrieve pups from the terminal so travelers can proceed straight to their flight.
“This project is fitting into a strategy to provide a very immersive experience to passengers,” said Marilena Blasi, chief commercial officer at Aeroporti di Roma, the company that manages the Italian capital’s two airports. “In this case, we provide services to dogs and the owners of the dogs.”
Basic rooms at the dog hotel cost about €40 ($47/P2,679) and feature temperature-controlled floors and private gardens. More timid or solitary dogs can be placed in kennels at the edge of the facility, where they interact with staff rather than other dogs in the common grass pens. At night, ambient music that has a frequency with a low, soft tone—432 hertz—designed for relaxation is piped in through the rooms’ speakers.
Extras, premium room
There are optional extras that range from the usual grooming, bathing and cleaning teeth services, to the more indulgent, such as aromatherapy with lavender or peppermint scents to help induce calm, or arnica cream rubbed into aching muscles and joints.
Owners unsatisfied with standard-issue webcams for checking in on their canines from afar can spring for a €60 (about $70/P4,018) premium room equipped with a screen for round-the-clock videocalls. They can even pamper their pet by tossing a treat via an application connected to a dispenser.
