Allowing pets in your B&B: policy, surcharge and how to set it up

An email lands in your inbox: "May we bring our dog?" You hesitate. Saying yes means one more booking — often exactly in the weeks where your calendar has holes. Saying no means peace and quiet, but also a guest who clicks straight through to the place down the road. Allowing pets isn't about loving dogs; it's a commercial decision with operational consequences. This article sets out what it really costs, how to write a policy you dare to enforce, which surcharge works, and how to get it correctly onto all your channels.

Why being pet friendly is commercially interesting

Owners travelling with their dog have a fundamentally smaller pool of places to choose from. That changes their search behaviour in three ways that work in your favour.

They filter first and compare second. On Booking.com and Airbnb they switch on the "pets allowed" filter before they even look at price. If you're not in that filtered list, you don't exist for them — no matter how sharp your rate is. If you are in it, you suddenly compete with a handful of properties instead of dozens.

They book outside the season. Walking weekends, autumn breaks, quiet weeks in February: exactly the periods where you want to close the gaps in your calendar.

They stay longer and come back. Someone who finds an address where the dog is genuinely welcome doesn't like switching. That's a free repeat booking.

What it actually costs you

Be honest about the cost side, or you'll set a surcharge that doesn't add up.

• Cleaning takes longer. Hair in the carpet and the sofa, a more thorough mopping, sometimes extra laundry. Budget realistically for thirty to sixty minutes extra per departure.
• Wear and tear is real. Scratches on the parquet by the door, a chewed chair leg, a knocked skirting board. Rare, but not zero.
• Allergies are your biggest risk. A guest with a dog allergy in the room where a labrador slept last week is a bad review you can't clean away. This is exactly why you shouldn't make your whole property pet friendly.
• Noise and shared spaces. A dog barking while its owner is out to dinner affects every other guest. The breakfast room, the garden and the wellness area need explicit rules.

The key choice: per room, not per property

The mistake most operators make is thinking in terms of "we either are or aren't pet friendly". The smart answer sits in between: designate one or two rooms as pet rooms — preferably on the ground floor, with their own outside door and no carpet — and keep the rest strictly animal-free.

That way you win the filter on the OTAs, you keep the cleaning load down to a predictable number of rooms, and you can put an allergy-sensitive guest into a room where an animal has never been. That last point isn't a detail: it's exactly what your house rules need to be able to promise.

Your pet policy in six rules

A policy you don't dare enforce isn't a policy. Keep it short and concrete, and publish it on your own site and in the room description on every channel:

1. Which animals and how many. "One dog up to 20 kg" is manageable. "Pets welcome" is a blank cheque that one day arrives as a parrot.
2. In which rooms. Name the room. Then the guest knows in advance — and so do you.
3. Never left alone in the room. The classic: dog left behind, barks for two hours. Put it in writing.
4. Not on the bed or the sofa. Ask for their own basket or blanket — and put one out yourself; that works far better than a ban.
5. Where the animal may and may not go. Garden yes, breakfast room on a lead or not at all, wellness never.
6. Damage will be charged. One sentence is enough. You'll rarely need it, but it changes behaviour.

Surcharge: per night or per stay?

Both work, but they steer different behaviour.

A per-stay surcharge (say €20 to €30) covers exactly what it is: one extra clean. It's fair on longer bookings and therefore attractive if you'd rather sell weeks than single nights. Downside: on a one-night stay it feels heavy, just like a separate cleaning fee.

A per-night surcharge (€5 to €10) looks friendlier at booking time, but adds up on a week-long stay and hands you an argument at the front desk.

Our preference for a classic B&B: one amount per stay, stated clearly before booking, no surprise on arrival. And charge it as a separate line on the invoice — it's a service alongside the accommodation, with its own VAT treatment, and you'll want to see later what that pet room actually brought in.

Where it goes wrong: the channel detail

A pet policy is the textbook example of something that has to be right in four places at once: your own site, Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia. Each channel has its own field — a "pets allowed" attribute, a separate fee field, free text in the house rules. Change your surcharge only in your own widget and an outdated amount sits on an OTA for months. That's the kind of discrepancy guests raise at check-in, and one you always lose.

Just as important: if only one room is pet friendly, that attribute must never sit on your whole property. Otherwise an owner books your upstairs room and you're explaining on arrival why it isn't possible after all.

Where BedFlow PMS makes the difference

In BedFlow PMS you set a pet surcharge as an extra per room, not as a global rule. You decide whether it counts per night or per stay, and which rooms offer it at all. Those room attributes and fees flow automatically and two-way to Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and your own commission-free booking widget — you change it once instead of in four extranets.

When a booking includes a pet you see it right there in your arrivals overview, so housekeeping knows that room needs a longer turnaround. The surcharge lands as a separate line on the invoice with the right VAT, and after a season your figures show in black and white whether that one pet room really filled your low season — or just created extra work. It also makes a strong argument to drive direct bookings: on your own site you can waive the surcharge that an OTA booking does get charged.

In short

• Being pet friendly is mostly a visibility advantage: owners filter before they compare, and happily book outside the season.
• Don't convert your whole property — make one or two rooms pet friendly so you keep an allergy-free alternative.
• Write down six concrete rules and publish them on every channel, not just your own site.
• One surcharge per stay works better in practice than an amount per night.
• Make sure the surcharge, the attribute and the house rules say the same thing on every channel — differences always cost you at check-in.

Want to set a per-room pet surcharge that stays correct on Booking.com, Airbnb and your own site? Check the pricing, read the documentation or try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days — no credit card required.