What to charge for dog boarding: a method, not a guess

Almost every boarding kennel prices the same way: ring round, find out what the two places nearby charge, and sit somewhere between them.

The problem is obvious once you say it out loud. You’ve just priced your business off someone else’s cost base. They might own their building. They might have four staff to your two. They might be quietly losing money.

Here’s how to work it out from your own numbers instead.

Step 1: your real cost per run, per night

Take a full month. Add up everything the boarding side costs you:

Direct costs — food, bedding, cleaning, laundry, waste, water, the electricity for heating and drying.

Staff — the hours actually spent on boarding. Feeding, walking, cleaning, check-ins, check-outs, overnight cover. Include your own time at what you’d have to pay someone to do it.

Fixed costs, apportioned — rent or mortgage, insurance, rates, licensing, vehicle, software, accountancy. If boarding uses 60% of your floor space, take 60%.

The one everyone forgets — replacing things. Kennel doors, bedding, bowls, fencing, the pressure washer. Divide the replacement cost by the years you’ll get out of it and add a monthly figure.

Now divide by the number of occupied run-nights that month. Not your capacity. Occupied.

Example. Total boarding cost 240,000 a month. You have 14 runs, so 434 run-nights available at full occupancy, and you actually sold 260. Your cost per occupied run-night is 923.

That number is almost always higher than owners expect, because the fixed costs get spread over the nights you actually sold, not the nights you could have.

Step 2: know your real occupancy

This is where the money is, and where most kennels are flying blind.

You need three numbers:

• Average annual occupancy. Occupied run-nights divided by available run-nights, over twelve months. Most kennels run 45–65%. If you think you’re at 80%, you’re counting Christmas and forgetting February.
• Peak occupancy. What you hit at Christmas, Diwali, Easter, the summer weeks. Usually 95–100%.
• Trough occupancy. The dead weeks. Often under 30%.

The gap between those three is your entire pricing strategy.

Step 3: set the base rate

Base rate = cost per occupied run-night + your margin.

For a boarding business, a 25–35% net margin on the base rate is a reasonable target. Below 20% you have no cushion for a bad February or a broken boiler.

Carrying on the example: cost 923, target 30% margin, base rate ≈ 1,200 a night.

Now go and look at what the competition charges. Not to copy it, but as a sanity check. If your number comes out well above theirs, one of three things is true: you’re less efficient, you’re running at lower occupancy, or you’re offering something better and haven’t told anyone. All three are worth knowing.

If your number comes out below theirs, you’re probably underpricing. Most independents are.

Step 4: price the peaks properly

This is the single biggest thing kennels leave on the table.

At Christmas you are turning people away. That is the textbook definition of underpricing. A peak rate of 25–40% above base is normal and defensible, and the people booking Christmas in September are the least price-sensitive customers you have.

Structure it simply:

Period	Rate	Terms
Standard	Base	Deposit on booking
Peak (school holidays, festivals, Christmas)	Base + 25–40%	Non-refundable deposit, minimum stay
Trough (your known dead weeks)	Base − 10–15%	Advance booking only

The minimum stay at peak matters as much as the rate. A three-night minimum over Christmas stops a two-night booking blocking a run that a ten-night booking wanted.

Step 5: charge for the things you currently give away

Most kennels absorb these. They shouldn’t:

• Medication administration. It’s skilled, it carries risk, and it takes time. 100–200 per day is normal.
• Solo walks on top of standard exercise.
• Late collection. Have a grace period, then charge by the hour. Otherwise your Sunday evening belongs to whoever is least organised.
• Single-occupancy for a dog that would otherwise share.
• Special diets where you’re providing the food.

None of these are money-grabs. They’re time you’re already spending.

Step 6: watch what it did

Change one thing at a time and watch three numbers for a quarter:

1. Occupancy — did it drop, and by how much?
2. Revenue per available run-night — the real measure. Occupancy times rate. This is the number that should go up.
3. Enquiry-to-booking rate — if it collapses, you’ve gone too far.

A rate rise that costs you 5% occupancy and gains you 20% revenue is a good trade. Owners abandon good price rises all the time because occupancy dipped and they panicked, without checking whether they were actually making more money.

The bit that needs a system

All of this depends on knowing your occupancy accurately, by night, over a year. A diary won’t tell you that. A spreadsheet will, until someone forgets to update it in August.

Fretso’s boarding module books each stay against a specific run, so occupancy is a fact rather than an estimate, and you can see what’s free before you turn a booking away. The reports give you revenue split by service line, so you can see what boarding actually contributes against grooming and retail. And rates sit on the booking, so a peak-season price is applied because it’s December, not because someone remembered.

A worked summary

1. Add up every boarding cost for a month, including your own time and a sinking fund for replacements.
2. Divide by occupied run-nights, not capacity.
3. Add 25–35%. That’s your base rate.
4. Peak: base plus 25–40%, minimum stay, non-refundable deposit.
5. Trough: base minus 10–15%, advance only.
6. Charge separately for meds, solo walks, late collection and special diets.
7. Track revenue per available run-night, not occupancy, and give any change a full quarter.

Do that once a year. It takes an afternoon, and for most kennels it’s the most profitable afternoon of the twelve months.