“Emotional support animals?” Since when have they been a 'thing"? FML, what’s the world coming to?
Might just get me an emotional support alligator and see how that goes down.
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I want an emotional support dinosaur!
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I want an emotional support Porsche 
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This is probably a rhetorical question but the answer is that they’ve been around for decades.
The science around such animals is pretty weak but if you meet even one soldier with PTSD like I have who believes his life was saved by his emotional support animal you might not be so flippant.
https://www.animallaw.info/article/brief-summary-emotional-support-animals
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We posted no pets for a reason, deathly allergic and the unit is in our home. Not accepting pets is a hard and fast rule housing law cannot force a homeowner to accept a pet when the let units why would AirBnB?
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So that’s the cost of traveling with a dog, either you pay for boarding or take with with you either way it is the cost of pet ownership.
Try $20, what the worst that happens less travelers with pets or less bookings overall? I doubt you would get less bookings considering your niche.
RR
That doesn’t make sense to me. If I pay someone $30 a day they take care of the dog. If I take the dog with me and pay and extra $30 to stay in pet accepting listing I take care of the dog. Why would I pay more and do more work. There are reasons of course as I stated.
If I could get an extra $5 occasionally but lose even one $50 booking a month, I can’t make up the difference.
What percentage of your bookings are travellers with dogs? Do you really think you will lose a booking over $5 Only one way to know, test it. But yes that comes with a risk. I think the Fido travelers are going to have to find a place that accepts pets, and pay for it or stay in a dump. You have a good location, easy off the interstate, lots of great reviews. You have the advantage, you have what they need…
RR
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Sorry to say I don’t know, don’t keep a record and have no way to quickly figure it out. I’m guessing I average 3 a month, more in summer and mid-Dec to mid-Jan winter break.
With multiple listings charging less than I am or nothing, yes I do. How many? I don’t know. Remember I’m not getting 100s per night. There are 112 listings in my town that accept pets at under $60 a night. I’m not going to click on them all to see what their pet charge is. I can’t really accurately test it. If I had two identical listings right next door to each other and could have different pet fees on each I could test it.
I’ve recently raised my average price about 10%. If that continues to go well then maybe I will experiment with my pet fee starting mid May.
I’ll show you Just one competitor that I know doesn’t charge a pet fee. In some ways their listing is better than mine, in some ways not as nice. But it does show that people don’t have to stay in a dump to get a decent pet friendly airbnb in El Paso.
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/3147003?guests=1&adults=1
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Well that sinches it, you are right if you lost 1 booking it would not pay for a potential $15 a month increase. Better strategy inch up the nightly by $2 once in a while.
RR
As an aside, I raised my room rate in January in response to two things: holiday burn out and a regular guest who is also a host (in another town 3 hours away) telling me I should charge more. So I thought, “I’m ready for a break so it’s less of a risk.” I just took a quick look: January 2017 I made $1042. January 2018 $1048. January 2019 $834.
One month isn’t enough, there are defininitely other variables but if I’m going to lose $200 a month I think I’ll lower prices again.
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But are you doing the same amount of work or less? If you are doing $200 less work then it’s not as bad as it seems at first glance. You said you needed the break, right?
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Yes I’d be doing less work but that’s not my point.
My point is that a small price increase in my pet fee may result in fewer bookings.
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I had someone recently ask if I would make an exception to our no pets rule. I told her we don’t have a fenced in yard and we are out in the country, bordering state game lands, and don’t even like to take our dog with us because there is no defined yard. She kept pushing, finally saying that we would have to accept a support animal, and how is the different from a family member. I responded “I’m not sure how supportive your “family member” would be, if they were eaten by a bear, or shot by a hunter, but if you want to go that route, you’ll be required to sign a waiver of liability, drafted by my legal counsel” That shut her up.
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did you know that for Parvo it takes months, sometimes years to get rid of? and also the way to help a pet that has Parvo, for us, we gave them green peas, and it was the only thing the dog could digest. everything else just came right back up. the dog didn’t die from Parvo, it died from getting run over by a medicine man. it was a tough little dog. but all my pets are typically given shots. if the dog had Parvo it was likely a stray and they were probably trying to save it and didn’t expect it on the trip.
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Yes, that’s why we suggest telling entitled guests who want to bring their pets against your clearly stated policy that your dog died of parvo. Get it?
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Yah actually I did get it and was trying to be supportive. Sorry that effort was lost on you.
There was no dog with parvo… But yes it can take months or years for the virus to go away that’s why it is an effective deterrent to tell a person who is willing to ignore my no dog rules.
RR
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That’s illegal under US Law. If it’s really a service dog (and not a comfort pet) you are only allowed under Federal law to ask “is this animal trained to provide a service for you?” and “what service does the animal provide”? If it’s trained and is performing a service, you have to let the dog in. AirBnB’s rule requiring us to take folks with comfort animals is out of line. Fortunately, I don’t get folks trying get their bogus comfort animals staying here, probably because it takes 37 stairs to get to my rental rooms.
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I have never had any service animals stay at my listing but I have had two Emotional Support Animals (dogs). In my House Rules I say that ALL ANIMALS will be charged a nightly fee of $15-$20 (depending on the listing) if house trained and $25-$30 if not but that if they provide documentation for service or support I will gladly discount 50%. Truth is if it was a service animal I would do it for free once they provided documentation.
In the 2 ESA cases they were more than happy to provide their “documentation” to save $15-$37.50 for their stay. One I know was legitimate and one I know was fake (the $15 savings was the fake one) but karma will catch up to her one day and in the mean time I now have an additional source of documentation for fake credentials. It is sort of a thing I try to educate myself on as I continue to work with dogs and fellow wounded warriors who may actually need ESAs or trained service animals. One of my clients is also a trainer or service animals.