Accepting Pets! Advice? Tips? Experiences, both good and bad? Please Help!

[Kaitlin38]

I have been hosting for a year and only had 1 person with a pet, tiny dog, everything went fine. 

Although I have a huge fully fenced yard and am not opposed to pets (I don't have any of my own though, largely because of airbnb hosting and guest allergies), I run two rooms now and worry about other guests and their interactions with guest pets, barking, pet hair/smell, etc. 

For those of you who don't take them, why not?

For those who do, do you charge a security deposit?

What'd you put as a policy or rules? 

Did you charge extra for cleaning or extra per night? 

Thanks in advance!!!!!!

[Suzanne302]

@Kaitlin38  I allow pets and I'm positive I've gotten many bookings solely because of this. I rent a room in my home. I also have a dog myself.

You can't really charge a security deposit and Airbnb will NOT reimburse you for damages caused by pets.

I require pre-approval (the guest has to tell me about their dog), I accept ONLY dogs, and I charge a flat $25 pet fee. I make my pet policy very clear in several areas in my listing, confirm the guest has read the pet rules, and also send the rules in a separate message when I request the pet fee:

**PETS: DOGS ALLOWED BY PRE-APPROVAL ONLY and ADDITIONAL $25 PET CLEANING FEE.

*$25 Pet Fee must be paid prior to check-in or your dog will not be allowed on the property.
*Your dog should be friendly and house trained. Dogs that utilize pee pads are NOT allowed.
*Your dog must be supervised by you at all times or crated in the room if left alone.
*Any dog that becomes disruptive will need to be removed immediately.
*You will be charged for any damage caused by your dog
*Limit of one dog. An additional dog may be considered on a case by case basis.

I've hosted many wonderful dogs, a few slightly unruly dogs (no damage, just high energy not really suited for traveling), and only two who caused problems. Those problems were very minor...One was just a yippy dog who barked at everything and was slightly annoying, the other peed on my floor (easy to clean up). So all in all, nothing terrible has happened due to the fact that I allow dogs. As a matter of fact, most of the time, I hardly know they are here!

I do extra sanitizing after guests with dogs, and sometimes I deal with a bunch of dog hair. But most of the time I can barely tell there was a dog in the room! It also might be important to note my average stay is only 2-4 days.

I chose to allow dogs because I really appreciate pet-friendly listings myself as I like to bring my dog along with me whenever appropriate.

[Kaitlin38]

Thank you Suzanne this was very helpful! I'm still navigating my way through this, and it doesn't seem like anyone reads through the complete listing anyway! I've had a few 4 legged guests and so far all is well. 

How do you keep the pet fee separate? Before when I've tried to 'request money' the questions make it seem like I'm asking for damage reimbursement. Is there a better way?

[Josh9]

Great comment, very helpful!

[Lisa723]

@Kaitlin38 at our vacation rentals we charge $20/night/pet. Our house rules and booking message make very clear that this fee will be requested before check-in (via the resolution center as "extra services"). We haven't had any significant issues with pets and I think it increases our marketability overall, but collecting the fee is a pain since Airbnb has no specific pet fee structure. Guests not infrequently "forget" to tell us they are bringing a dog and we have to bring it up after they leave and we find the dog hair, which is not good. Am considering doing away with the fee and building it into rates, but that is not really fair to our non-pet-bringing guests.

In our in-home guest suite we do not allow pets.

It depends a lot on your situation.

[Kevin1322]

well as a new (to Airbnb) host, I'm not sure if this is much help. But we have three greyhounds.

As a breed they are up there with the least smelly dogs.

A room air-purifier imho is essential if there are or have been pets in a room. 

I'm in two minds whether to go the whole hog and go the "pets welcome"  niche.

The only drawback with us is that greyhounds, lovely, gentle and odourless as they are, see small furry things as "prey", including playful small dogs, and at the very least that means forms to fill in, and probably a bad review.

We do have friends and greyhound owners from another booking platform and social media frequently stay with us from before we joined Airbnb.

You will find that experienced (which means usually older) pet owners are very responsible with their dogs. Younger and inexperienced pet owners often haven't got a clue.

The rule we set is if your dog gets on with ours and will sleep downstairs with ours, then that's great. But we don't want your dog sleeping on a bed that a guest will be sleeping on tomorrow.

It's a hard call, isn't it.

[Laura2592]

We allow pets. We are pet people. About 60% of our guests travel with their pets. 

We don't live on site and had one dog do extensive damage. The guests were a family traveling for a wedding and left the dog locked in the laundry room while they attended the festivities. The poor thing almost chewed through our very thick antique door a d ruined the doorframe. The guests actively tried to hide the damage and went as far as painting over the 

chewing on the doorframe. We discovered it, got a quote for repair and asked the guests to pay. They denied all knowledge. We opened a case and LOST because the guest was adamant that because we were pet friendly it had to be another dog. It was ridiculous. Got zero support. Paid out of pocket and have since required a security deposit. 

The biggest problem with accepting pets is that not all pet owners are created equal. We now won't accept pets if the guests are in town for an event (why subject your dog to staying alone for hours upon hours in a strange place)? We ask a lot of questions. We have a ring doorbell do we can see what kinds of pets are coming in as not all guests are honest about number breed and size. Most of our guests with pets are super conscientious. And we get a lot of bookings because people love that we allow pets.

If it were a house I lived in I would be very picky about accepting pets. Type, breed, size and number restrictions. Definitely a security deposit is necessary. I truly wish Airbnb would make it easier to acknowledge pets at booking and charge a pet fee or even adjust deposits and cleaning fees up front. 

[Bonnie215]

Try using a timestamp app after every cleaning if ea room.

That would have been your proof it wasn't another dog.

It stamps ea picture with address of property alongvwith date and time.

My housekeeper uses it.  Make sure to take pictures as soon as you notice it with another timestamp picture 

[Alice595]

In my opinion, there are following factors to consider if you want to accept pets

(1) Where your property is located.

Guests who might bring pets would bring them when they go on a vacation where they relax or retreat for a few days. Such properties are often near the beach, in the mountain, in some scenic areas. If your property is located in the center of the city, the guests are mainly those who come to work temporarily, on a business trip, or do sight seeing in the city. Those guests normally don't bring pets with them.

(2) Who your target guests are. 

If you target your guests to be those pets lovers, you may want to set your listing to accept pets and you can make a little more by getting pets fees. And those pets lovers don't care to pay a little more for their pets.

(3) Your personal preference of pets

Normally the hosts who loves pets would like to welcome guests who love pets as well.

(4) Health concerns

Some hosts who are extremely allergic to pets would not welcome pets to be accepted even if they don't live on the property

(5) Cleaning and damage concerns

Some hosts who have concerns about extra cleaning and damage which might cause by pets would not welcome pets.

(6) Neighborhood requirements

Some neighbors could be offended by pets brought around. In this case, no pets policy would need to be in place.

[Maureen544]

I have been hosting almost a year now. I tried accepting dogs for a few months. The results were mixed. I specified in my listing that one well behaved dog, under 30 lbs. was accepted, on leash when outside, waste to be picked up, no dogs on furniture. $50 deposit required.
3 out of five guests were great. However, one guest had an extremely aggressive dog that lunged, barked and growled when unloading from the car. The young woman who owned him said he had issues with other dogs when she arrived. Obviously her dog wanted to fight with my dog immediately. She allowed the dog to sleep in the bed with her and I spent a lot of time washing all the bedding which was covered in dog hair.

The other guest had 2 large mastiff mixes, her “babies”. She booked then told me about her dogs and hoped it would be ok. She said they were very well behaved. I should have cancelled her booking then, and taken the repercussions from Airbnb.  They were to spend 3 nights. The dogs were left loose 2 times when both times came running up to me growling and barking. I told the guests I did not feel safe and they packed up and left. No apologies from them. They left me a poor review about communication and claimed that I’m afraid of big dogs, which I am not.
Needless to say, I no longer allow pets. I don’t need the hassle.

[Mary1523]

We've decided to not accept pets. It is made very clear to guests. We don't have any pets ourselves so it's not familiar to us and our cleaner wasn't willing to do more cleaning on pet hair etc. No way we could enforce an inside/outside when its a farm property. Plus most of our inside is carpet. The remainder is parquetry. Too much risk of damage but more importantly, any strange dogs impact the cattle and neighbours especially if city dogs. And the all the difficulty of charging for size of dog and additional cleaning, bah, too much to worry about.

Having said that, we know guests have had pets there as we had to do a steam carpet clean for another reason, and the professional guys said a dog had urinated on the carpet in times past as their spray showed it up. Nothing we could do but it's disrespectful by those guests, whoever they were.

Your choice, we accept we may lose bookings but we've survived fine.

Kind regs

MK