Allowing pets in your short-term rental is a difficult decision. Pet-friendly Airbnb’s can be a bit of extra work, but can also bring in more bookings.
Should You Allow Pets in your Short-Term Rental
Should You Allow Pets in Your Short-Term Rental?
Whether or not you should allow pets in your short-term rental is a tough decision. Pet friendliness is among the top desired amenities among Airbnb and Booking.com guests, and no more than 3% of Airbnb rentals are pet-friendly in any given market. Allowing pets in your short-term rental can result in more bookings, but also exposes your home to the possible dangers and damages that a pet can cause.
Reasons You Should Consider Allowing Pets
- Increase your Booking Rate – With only 3% of listings allowing pets, your listing will get a lot more traction.
- Increase Earnings – You can often charge an extra fee for pets and increase cleaning fees
- Returning Guests – Pets are considered family by pet-owners. Providing a friendly home for their pets means they’ll be more likely to book with you again.
While damage caused by pets should occur rarely, here are a few things to consider when it comes to operating a pet-friendly short-term rental.
Assistance Animals and Airbnb
Be aware that even if your listing specifies no pets, Airbnb’s Nondiscrimination policy specifies that hosts are expected to accommodate assistance animals belonging to guests, even if not provided with prior disclosure. Hosts cannot charge any additional fees when a guest has an assistance animal due to a disability, but are not required to host an assistance animal if they pose a health and safety hazard to the host or others in the home.
Can your Home and Neighbourhood Comfortably Allow for Pets?
When deciding whether you should make your Airbnb listing pet-friendly, the first thing you should consider is whether your home actually has the space and amenities necessary to accommodate a four-legged guest. Try to objectively evaluate your home and neighbourhood for some basic necessities when it comes to hosting a pet. Is your home spacious enough for a pet to be comfortable? Do you have closeby neighbours that might be bothered in case a visiting dog enjoys barking? Do you have a fenced off backyard for pets to enjoy without escaping? If not, is there accommodating space in your neighbourhood for any pets that need to be taken out for walks among nature?
Going through some of these basic questions you might come up against some unexpected limitations of your home or neighbourhood that you hadn’t considered. You should also consider some of the possible negative scenarios that hosting pets can result in. Is most of your home carpeted? Then maybe hosting pets isn’t the best idea. Is the unscratched sanctity of your furniture very important to you? Hosting pets that could potentially damage it isn’t a risk you should take. Along with these factors, consider whether you’ll be able to clean up pet hair properly in case any guests allergic to pets come stay with you in the future.
Prepare Your Home for Pets
If you choose to allow pets in your short-term rental, take the time to prepare your home properly. Having small pet amenities will go a long way for guests travelling with their pets, and will likely be noted in their reviews. Purchasing a few items can also help towards simplifying your cleanup and limiting potential furniture damage. Travelers with pets often will forget the simple things like dog bags or food dishes. Accidents happen when you have pets around so have plenty of towels and some sort of pet mess specific cleaning supplies – owners will want to make sure the clean it up, so having supplies on hand will save your floors!
A few simple pet amenities to consider:
- Food and water bowls
- Throw towels to protect furniture
- Doggie bags
- Indoor potty pads
- Paper towels and cleaning supplies
Best Practices for Your Pet-Friendly Rental
If you decide to accept pets, make sure to have the information front-and-centre on your listing, to ensure that pet-owners see this and are incentivized to book your listing. Some listings use their pet-friendly status as the main attraction, putting “pet-friendly” in the listing’s name.
- Make sure to include whether you have pets of your own in your listing description.
- Update your house rules with a section covering your expectations when it comes to hosting pets in your home.
- Outline any fees you are charging pets.
- Provide basic pet-friendly amenities.
- Make sure there are plenty of paper towels and cleaning supplies.
Having these guidelines in your listing will help avoid any misunderstandings or accidents when guests bring their pets, and make for a smoother hosting experience overall.
About Keycafe
Keycafe is a technology company modernizing business key management with a cloud-connected SmartBox and accompanying key management software.
In addition to a global Public Network of over 1000 locations for Airbnb users, Keycafe’s Enterprise Solution enables businesses in any industry to manage key access for staff and customers.
