How To Allow (or Not Allow) Pets In Your Airbnb

We quickly saw demand from guests wanting to have pets stay in our first Airbnb property. This has been primarily because of our properties location to nearby parks and pet-friendly restaurants and bars.

As a host in any city, this will be something you’ll want to be aware of and plan for. Both of us are very pet-friendly but when it comes to other guests being allergic or having issues after the pets check-out there can be issues. In traditional hotel businesses, it’s the norm to charge an additional cleaning fee IF they allow pets at all. The fact that hotels normally don’t allow pets is a massive opportunity for Airbnb hosts everywhere and worth capitalizing on.

With that said, charging between $10-25 per night is a reasonable fee to add onto the cleaning fee if guests want to have their pet come to stay. This will allow you to deep clean preventing any issues for future allergic guests.

A very important question to ask the guests before welcoming their pet is “What kind of pet is it?”
“Are they well behaved?”
“How old is the pet?”

More often than not pet owners will include these details in the initial inquiry. If they don’t its important to ask to gauge what kind of cleaning will need to be completed after check-out.

For example, a chihuahua puppy might require less of a cleaning fee than a Great Dane puppy. This is not always the case but its important to be prepared for everything. We actually ran into a guest that snuck a dog into the unit and left dog hair everywhere as well as dirt and sand. These issues will come up when you’re booking 15-20 nights per month and you need to be prepared to EXTRA clean the property before booking more guests.

You don’t want to have a future guest have an allergic reaction to previous guests pet hair. This would lower your 5-star rating for something that was preventable.

If you are doing the cleaning yourself these are the top cleaning products on Amazon to purchase:
– Odor Miracle Stain Removal
– Bissell Power Lift-Off Steam Mop
– Natures Miracle Deep Clean

One of the most important parts to Airbnb is that it is YOUR property and you choose who can come and stay. This allows you to control the fees and pet policy. All the issues can be fixed that a pet causes and worst case you contact Airbnb support about helping you charge the guest for destroyed items in the property.

Hope you get some amazing pets coming to stay 🙂

Love,
Scooch and Steve