Allowing Pets In Your Vacation Rental: Yes or No?
Allowing pets in your vacation rental or not really is just a matter of preference. The big listing sites are telling us that we need to be pet-friendly to increase our bookings. We all love our pets, the problem is trusting someone else’s pets.
Most pet owners consider pets a part of the family, and there aren’t many pet friendly VRBO / Airbnb listings. That translates to more bookings for the ones that do offer it. 😉
It seems the world is getting more and more pet friendly, I mean they just started a pet airline called Bark Airlines! You might as well get on the band wagon, otherwise before long, you’ll be the odd man out. 🙂
We’ve personally been all over the map with this topic over the years. We started off resisting it for years, and ours (and I’m sure most people’s) two big sticking points with allowing pets in your vacation rental are:
- it increases your changes of property damage
- it increases the chance of a bad review if all the dog hair isn’t cleaned up
If you’re on the fence about allowing pets in your STR, I think it’s a safe bet that your reason is in that short list above.
We felt the same way! Here’s a bit of our “allowing pets in STRs” story, which started very anti-pet.
Why We’re Allowing Pets In Our Airbnb
Our VRBO account manager was telling us for years that we should accept pets and that was a hard line in the sand for us. We felt it was way too risky to let someone bring their pets. After all we don’t know how good they are as pet owners, are they going to damage furniture, is there going to be pee everywhere? Basically, when the topic was brought up we had the worst possible images flash through our heads. lol
So for years we did not allow pets and in our minds, that was never going to change…. until 2020 came along. Our bookings were sparse and the VRBO account manager told us there was a huge increase in guests booking with pets.
We were much more receptive to it at that time because our bookings weren’t doing very well – so we decided to allow pets.
And OMG! Our bookings increased dramatically! 3/4 of our bookings had pets! It was pretty amazing, and the guests with the pets were fantastic guests! We felt like we really missed out on a ton of bookings because we weren’t willing to give allowing pets a shot.
Today, the percentage of our bookings with pets has gone down quite a bit, but it’s still a pretty high percentage. Right now about 25% of our bookings have pets.
Of course, just like we need to screen our guests, we also have to filter and be decerning with pets.
In this post we’ll go over what our process is for accepting pets and how we filter them. Keep in mind everyone has a different comfort level, so adjust everything below to what makes you comfortable. 🙂
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Before Allowing Pets In Your Vacation Rental – Your Need Good Cleaners
Before you think about accepting pets in your short term rental, your cleaners need to be top notch. Accepting pets means more dirt and possibly dog hair, if your cleaners aren’t able to get your house spotless currently before you allow pets – then you have to first address that a problem.
The goal here is two fold, increase your bookings, while at the same time increasing the number of positive reviews. If you think there’s a chance your cleaners can’t handle it you’ll need to address it with them, and get new cleaners if they can’t handle it.
Bad reviews are the kryptonite to successful STR businesses – do whatever you can to steer clear of them. If you don’t feel confident that your house will be clean after you host a guest with a pet don’t risk a bad review.
That being said, it is well worth the effort to find a good cleaner, who would give you that sense of confidence and start accepting pets.
We wrote a post a while back with things to look out for with your cleaners, check out this post here, Cleaners Will Make Or Break Your Airbnb Business.
A Quick Note: Service Animals Are Not Pets
Service animals can not be turned away and you cannot charge an extra fee for them. Service animals are animals that perform a job (think along the lines of seeing-eye dog). You have to allow service animals, that’s a federal law.
Now, there are a lot of people out there that try to call their emotional support animal a service animal but the two are very different. Emotional support animals still fall into the pet category, with the exception of New York and California, where I think you have to make an accommodation for emotional support animals.
The link below has more details on this but in general, if the dog’s mere presence provides comfort, it isn’t a service animal under the ADA.
However, if the dog is trained to perform a task related to a person’s disability, it is a service animal under the ADA.
This link has great info on the questions you can ask:
https://adata.org/faq/how-can-i-tell-if-animal-really-service-animal-and-not-just-pet
What Pet Limits Should You Set
Yes, we do allow pets in our Airbnbs, but we set limits on what pets we accept. We’ll go over what we accept here but you should adjust it to whatever makes you feel more comfortable.
We Only Accept Dogs
The word pets is pretty open ended. It makes sense to set a boundary somewhere.
Would you accept a pet pony in your Airbnb? How about a pet mountain lion? LOL I don’t think so!
It’s important to figure out where your line in the sand is. We decided that the only pet we accept is a dog, and 99.999% of the time the pet guests want to bring is a dog. We’ve had people ask if they can bring their cats, and we even had another person ask if they can bring their parrots! Hard no. lol
We figured dogs was a good first step. We definitely can not accept cats, if a cat has an accident in the house it is game over! It is hard as heck to get rid of that smell, and we can not take that chance.
How Many Pets Is Too Many Pets To Allow In An Airbnb?
We limit the number of pets to two. We have had people ask if they can bring 6 dogs to our vacation rental – 6 dogs! That is way too many dogs for us. We’d be stressing out the entire time, worrying about what they’re doing to our short term rental. LOL
We display the 2 pet limit on the listing and people will always inquire if you would accept more pets. It’s completely discretionary. We’ve made exceptions to our 2 dog limit before, if they have 3, 4-pound toy yorkies then we have no problem making an exception.
How Big A Dog Should You Allow In Your STR?
We have a limit of a medium sized dog (less than 50lbs). You can of course accept how ever large a dog you feel comfortable with. You may also want to check your home owners insurance policy, I’ve heard of some policies have a limit on size and bread that would be covered.
How Much To Charge For The Pet
We charge a flat fee of $120 per pet. When they book through VRBO they can only add the pet fee for one pet, if there’s more than one we send them the payment request for the additional pet.
Sometimes we waive the additional pet fees – it’s all adjustable. Let’s say the guest with 3, 4 pound toy yorkies, if they’re only staying for a 3 day weekend we don’t see a reason to charge them $360 for the 3 doggies. Instead we charge what we think feels fair.
How To Vet The Pet
We have the guest sign a pet waiver and we ask them for a picture of the fur baby/fur babies. Between those two, it gives you a good idea of what you’re getting into and gives the guest an idea of what they are getting into as well.
Use A Pet Waiver
The pet waiver basically goes over what we expect from them and their pets. We have them sign it to give them a sense of responsibility and it forces them to acknowledge what we are expecting.
Things like:
- No pets on the beds or furniture
- They need flee treatment
- Pets can not be left in the house alone unattended
- Pets can not be left alone in the pool enclosure
- If we need to treat for flees they are willing to pay for the treatment
- we require a grooming prior to arrival
- Pets need to be on a leash at all times when outside
It also has a few fields for them to fill out, name, size, bread and weight. We make note of the pet’s name, and use it when we recommend pet friendly activities in the area. 😉
Ask For A Fur Baby Picture
There’s a couple of reasons for the pictures.
First, people love sharing pictures of their fur baby – it builds rapport with the guest.
Second, it gives us an idea of what the dog looks like. If the dog has long hair or looks bigger than we’re comfortable with, or if the dog looks like it may be too aggressive we express our concern to the guest and they’ll either cancel or assure us that they won’t be a problem.
Either way, it makes sure your concern is addressed.
What You Need To Change To Be A Pet-Friendly STR
We haven’t changed anything at the vacation rentals to make them pet-friendly. I know some STRs have dog beds, dog bowls, doggie bags, treats, etc…
We felt many of those things are preference based so we left it alone. What we do do is send them information on pet-friendly places, like restaurants, also the closest animal hospital, and closest groomer. We also tell them the HOA rules, like picking up after their dog and that the dog should always be on a leash when outside.
There You Have It
That’s basically everything we do, now that we allow pets in our vacation rentals.
Are you already accepting pets in your Airbnb? If not, are you thinking of allowing pets in your vacation rental?
How’s your experience been hosting pet-friendly stays?
Is there something you would do different?
Maybe there’s something I didn’t cover?
Let me know in the comments, I’d love to know.
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