Until recently, I thought that you had to find the names of some dog-friendly hotels in the location you want to visit, then laboriously look them up on TripAdvisor to see which of them you, the human, would like best. Foolish me. It turns out that TripAdvisor will tell you which of the hotels it lists are pet-friendly, if you coax it a little.

Here’s what you do: Go to TripAdvisor, type in your destination and select your dates (if you just want a list of pet-friendly hotels and haven’t yet chosen your dates, type dates in anyway). You’ll get a list of hotels and a couple of new options to choose among. In a sidebar on the left you can “Refine Search,” specifically by scrolling down and clicking on “Pets Allowed” under “Amenity Type.” To the right, and just below your destination and chosen dates you’ll see a couple of buttons for “All with confirmed availability” and “Regardless of availability.” If you want to see a list of all the hotels at your destination that accept pets, select “Regardless of availability” and click on “Search.” If you know your travel dates and want to find out what pet-friendly rooms are actually available, click on “All with confirmed availability” instead.

I don’t know where TripAdvisor gets its data, so I can’t tell you how complete the listings are. It’s certainly a good place to start, though — I’m a big fan of TripAdvisor.