Making an Airbnb pet friendly raised our bookings by about 22 percent on the two units we tried it on, added roughly $2,400 a year per unit in pet fees, and cost us one sofa, one rug, and a two-day deep clean that we still talk about. On balance it was worth it, and we've since opened four of our seven units to dogs. But it isn't free money, and the listings that make it look that way are leaving out the part where a beagle eats the baseboard. Here's the whole picture, four years in.
Quick context for anyone new here: we renovate small apartments in Austin and run them as short-term rentals. This is the pet post. If you want the general setup, the setup checklist is the place to start.
Why we went pet friendly in the first place
Because Austin is a dog city and we were turning away money. In our first year hosting, we said no to pets on principle, and our inbox had a steady drip of "do you allow dogs?" messages that ended in a polite decline and a lost booking. We counted them for three months in 2022: 31 inquiries, all lost. At our average stay that was somewhere around $9,000 of bookings walking to a competitor.
The other reason is that Airbnb's search filter for "pets allowed" is one of the most-used filters on the platform, and a listing that doesn't check the box simply doesn't appear for those guests. You're not competing for them and losing. You're invisible.
What happened when we switched on two units
We started in spring 2023 with the two ground-floor units, one studio and one one-bedroom, because ground floor means no stairs for an old dog and a direct door to outside for a young one. We set a pet fee of $45 per stay, allowed up to two dogs, no cats (allergies are a review killer and cat hair is forever), and wrote the rules into the listing.
Over the following twelve months, compared to the twelve before: bookings up 22 percent on the studio, 19 percent on the one-bedroom. Average length of stay went up half a night, because people traveling with a dog tend to drive rather than fly and stay a little longer. Pet fees totaled $2,340 on the studio and $2,610 on the one-bedroom. Reviews mentioning the dog policy: 41, all positive, several saying it was the reason they booked.
Damage over the same twelve months: one sofa cushion chewed through to the foam ($180 to replace the cover, which we'd had made washable so it was a cover, not a sofa), one wool rug that a puppy used as a bathroom repeatedly over a four-night stay and that never fully recovered ($310), a scratched interior door ($90 in filler and paint and an afternoon), and one deep clean after a guest with what she described as "a slightly shedding husky" ($240 extra to Rosa, who was polite about it and has never forgotten). Total: about $820 across both units. Against $4,950 in fees. The fees covered the damage six times over.
How much should you charge as a pet fee?
We've settled on $45 per stay for up to two dogs, and we've tested $25, $45, and $75. At $25 the fee didn't cover a deep clean when we needed one. At $75 we saw pushback in messages and a couple of guests who "forgot to mention" the dog, which is worse than any fee because then you find out from the cleaner. At $45 nobody argues and almost everybody declares.
Per-stay beats per-night for us. A per-night pet fee on a week-long booking gets big fast and starts to feel punitive, and the dog doesn't make more mess on night six than night one. Some hosts charge per pet; we cap at two and charge flat, because the second dog is rarely double the work.
What we don't do is charge a refundable pet deposit through Airbnb, because the platform doesn't really support it cleanly and guests find it confusing. The fee is the fee. If there's damage beyond it, we go through the resolution center with photos, and we've done that twice in four years.
What we changed in the units before allowing dogs
This is the part that made it work, and it's mostly the same list as making a unit easy to clean, which we'd already half-done. We wrote about materials that hold up to guests and most of it applies double for dogs.
Floors: both pet units have luxury vinyl plank, not hardwood, not carpet. Claws don't mark it, accidents wipe up, and it's the single biggest reason the damage list above is so short. The flooring post goes into why.
Rugs: we switched to washable rugs, the flat-woven kind that go in a domestic machine, and we keep a spare rolled in the closet so a turnover doesn't wait on a wash. The wool rug we lost was the last non-washable one in either unit. Lesson learned at $310.
Sofas: performance fabric, removable washable covers, no loose cushions that can be dragged off. We have one sofa per unit and it costs more than the one we'd buy for a no-pet unit, about $1,100 versus $700. Over two years of dog guests it's been washed nine times and looks fine.
Lighting: this one surprised us. A wagging tail at coffee-table height takes out a table lamp about once a season in a pet unit; we lost two in the first six months. So we moved every lamp off the low surfaces and onto the walls. A pair of plug-in sconces at the bedside and one by the sofa, cords run along the baseboard behind a cover strip so nothing gets chewed. No lamps on end tables at all. We haven't lost a light fixture since, and it made the units look better, which we've said before in the renter-friendly lighting post.
Small things: a hook by the door at leash height, two stainless bowls and a mat, a roll of poop bags in a jar, a towel by the door labeled "for muddy paws" so it isn't the good towel, and a laminated card with the nearest vet, the nearest dog park (we're lucky, there's one four blocks away), and the two nearby patios that allow dogs. That card gets photographed and posted more than any other thing in the unit.
Writing the listing so the right dog owners book
Checking the "pets allowed" box gets you into the filter. What you write after that decides who shows up. We rewrote the pet paragraph in both listings three times before it worked, and the version that works is specific to the point of being boring.
It says: dogs welcome, up to two, $45 per stay, declared at booking. It says the floors are vinyl plank and the rugs are washable, which tells a responsible owner that we've thought about this and tells a puppy owner that accidents are survivable. It names the dog park and the distance. It says the unit is ground floor with a door straight to a small fenced patio, which is true for one unit and the single most-mentioned feature in reviews from dog people. It says no dogs left alone more than four hours, in the listing, not just the rules, so nobody's surprised.
What we took out: "well-behaved pets only," which every listing says and which means nothing, and "pet-friendly" as a headline word, which pulled in cat owners and one person with a rabbit. "Dogs welcome" is clearer. We also stopped putting a photo of a dog in the listing, which felt cute and turned out to attract exactly the "I didn't think I needed to mention it" crowd. The photos show the leash hook and the bowls. That's enough.
The cleaning side, in detail
A standard turnover on the pet units is about forty minutes longer than on the others, and Rosa charges accordingly, $30 more per clean. That's the real cost of the policy on a day-to-day basis, and it's why the $45 fee isn't profit; about two-thirds of it goes straight to the extra cleaning time and the rest banks against the rug-and-sofa fund.
What the extra forty minutes is: a full vacuum with the pet attachment on every soft surface, the sofa covers stripped and washed if there's any hair at all, the washable rug swapped for the spare, the floor mopped twice rather than once, the bowls run through the dishwasher, and a walk around the baseboards with a flashlight looking for chew marks and the other thing dogs do to corners. We added an enzyme spray to the cleaning kit in the first month. It's the only product that actually removes the smell rather than covering it, and we buy it by the gallon now.
The other thing that changed is inspection. We look at the pet units ourselves after every dog stay, not one in three like the others, because the damage that matters, a chewed cord or a scratched door, is easy for a cleaner in a hurry to miss and expensive to find out about from the next guest.
The rules that keep it from going wrong
Dogs only, two maximum, must be declared at booking. Not on the furniture is a rule we list and don't seriously expect to be followed, which is why the furniture is washable. Not left alone in the unit for more than four hours, because a bored dog alone in a strange apartment is where the baseboard-eating happens, and it's also where the noise complaints from the unit upstairs come from. That one we do enforce; two warnings on the noise monitor and we message.
No puppies under a year unless the guest tells us and we agree. The rug incident was a five-month-old. Puppies are wonderful and they are not house-trained, and a guest who's traveling with one has usually not thought about what four days on someone else's floor means.
And we ask, in the pre-arrival message, what kind of dog it is. Not to screen breeds; we don't. Because "a slightly shedding husky" is information that lets us book Rosa for an extra hour and not be surprised.
What went wrong, and what we'd do differently
The wool rug. We knew better and left it because it looked good in photos. Every rug in a pet unit should go in a machine.
The first month, we didn't have the leash hook or the towel by the door, and two guests used the bathroom hand towels for muddy paws, which meant a full towel replacement at the next turnover. Twelve dollars in hooks and a labeled towel fixed it permanently.
We also underestimated how many guests would bring a dog and not say so once the listing said "pets allowed." The assumption seems to be that "allowed" means "free." The listing now says the fee in the first paragraph and again in the house rules, and the pre-arrival message asks directly. Undeclared dogs dropped to almost zero.
Should you make your Airbnb pet friendly?
If you have hard floors, a washable sofa, and a way to keep lamps off low tables, yes, and price the fee at what a deep clean costs you. You'll get more bookings, slightly longer stays, and a set of guests who are grateful in reviews in a way that few other guests are. If you have carpet, a fabric sofa you love, and a landlord upstairs who hates barking, no, or not yet. Fix the unit first.
Four of our seven are pet friendly now. The other three are upstairs units with neighbors who've asked us not to, and we've honored that. The four that are have the best occupancy in the portfolio. The husky's owner came back twice.
Shop this post: plug-in wall sconces to get every lamp off tail-height surfaces, and bedside sconces that leave nothing on the nightstand to knock over.
