The Fee For Nothing

Nobody in your organisation decided to run a deception. The pet fee arrived the way most fees arrive: a competitor charged one, revenue management matched it, and the word "cleaning" was attached because it sounded better than "surcharge". Years later it sits in your booking flow, priced per night, defended by nobody, and generating a specific kind of one-star review.

Here is what it is actually costing you. Starting with how your own side of the industry describes the practice when it thinks nobody official is listening: a former property manager, posting publicly, called it a scam and said the fees were built into the yearly budget as income.

The label is the exposure

The FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, took effect on 12 May 2025 and covers short-term lodging by name. Most of the industry's compliance effort went into the headline requirement: the total price, including mandatory fees, displayed upfront as the first and most prominent figure. If your pet fee still appears for the first time in house rules, a pop-up, or a check-in conversation, you are not close to compliant, but you already know that.

The section that should worry you more is the one nobody talks about. Section 464.3 makes it an unfair or deceptive practice to misrepresent the nature and purpose of any charge, including through a misleading label. Read that against your own fee schedule. A charge labelled "pet cleaning fee" creates a factual claim: that the money corresponds to cleaning. If the fee is $150 per night and the incremental housekeeping cost of a dog is a fraction of that, once, the label is making a claim your own operations data contradicts. That exposure exists independently of how prominently you disclosed the number.

Enforcement is not hypothetical. The Texas Attorney General has settled with major hospitality operators over fee practices, including $1.25 million from Hyatt in December 2025 and $9.5 million from Booking.com. Colorado's deceptive pricing statute, in force since January 2026, adds triple damages, statutory penalties, and a private right of action, which is the mechanism class action firms are built on. The UK has banned pet fees in residential tenancies outright. Australia's pending unfair trading legislation points the same way. Every jurisdiction that has looked at unexplained fees has reached the same conclusion, and your pet fee is an unexplained fee with a misleading name.

Pricing a fear, not a cost

The fee is defended internally as damage protection, so it is worth knowing what the published data says about the risk being priced.

The Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative's 2021 research found 9% of pet-owning residents reported their animal ever caused damage. Property managers in the same study estimated 28%. Managers estimate three times the damage that residents report, and the fee prices the estimate. When damage did occur it averaged $210, against $223 for damage in units with no animal at all. A peer-reviewed study in Anthrozoös found no statistically significant difference in overall damage between pet and non-pet households. Propertymark's survey of UK letting agents and landlords found pets, adult guests, and children caused damage at 85.3%, 84.7%, and 54.9% respectively.

Meanwhile the guest behaviour you charge nothing for costs you more. Industry estimates put a single unauthorised smoking incident at around $1,100 and days of lost room inventory. You do not surcharge smokers at booking. You charge the individual who smokes. That asymmetry is the tell your dog-owning guests have noticed: every other damage risk in your property is handled on occurrence, and theirs alone is handled on suspicion, in advance, per night.

The guest you never see again

The deterrent fee works. That is the problem. It deters.

It deters most effectively against exactly the segment you should want: the long-stay guest, because the nightly structure scales the punishment with the length of the stay. A one-night city break absorbs a $75 fee. A two-week stay with a dog reads a $1,050 pet charge as an insult, books elsewhere, and tells other dog owners, who as a group ask each other before they book anything.

Industry analyses consistently find that guests travelling with dogs stay longer, spend more on property, and return at rates far above benchmark when the experience delivers, and that pet travel is one of the few hospitality segments growing at double digits into a market where US RevPAR fell 0.3% in 2025. A fee that collects $150 and delivers nothing did not earn $150. It borrowed it against the repeat booking that will not happen and the review that will.

Check your own reviews for the phrase "not actually pet friendly". That phrase is a category on TripAdvisor in all but name. Guests who write it are not reviewing your fee. They are reviewing the gap between your label and your delivery, and the fee is where the gap is most visible, because it is the only part of your dog policy with a number attached.

The undisclosed dog

There is a second-order effect your revenue model is not pricing. A fee experienced as punitive does not just deter bookings, it deters honesty. Guests who feel the charge is a shakedown stop declaring the dog, or declare it as a service animal, and your property ends up with the animal anyway, minus the fee, minus the deposit, minus any operational warning that a dog is in the building.

That is the deterrent fee's true output: not fewer dogs, but undeclared ones. A hotel with no pet policy is not a hotel without dogs, it is a hotel with unmanaged dogs, and every front desk forum is full of the consequences. The fee designed to protect your housekeeping budget is manufacturing exactly the unplanned, unprepared dog stays that actually cost you money.

Two coherent strategies

There are two coherent strategies for a hotel and dogs, and they point in opposite directions.

One: you do not want dogs. That is a legitimate operating decision. Say no, say it clearly, and enjoy the allergy-sensitive and animal-averse guests who will actively prefer you for it. A clean no costs you nothing but the segment you did not want.

Two: you want dogs, because you want the segment's length of stay, on-property spend, and loyalty. Then the fee must be a price, not a barrier. Flat, not nightly, because your cleaning cost is incurred once. Inside the displayed total at booking, because federal law now requires it anyway. Attached to something the guest can see: a bed in the room, bowls, a welcome that extends past the bedroom door. And unstacked, because a fee plus a deposit plus a weight limit plus a supervision rule is not a policy, it is a moat with a tollbooth.

What is not coherent is the current default: advertising the welcome and pricing the discouragement. It fails the guest at the booking page, fails the audit under §464.3, and fails you in the repeat-business ledger. If your pet fee cannot survive being explained to the guest's face, item by item, it cannot survive a regulator reading it either.

The word is closing

The deeper problem is the label the fee hides behind. "Pet-friendly" is an unverified, undefined claim, and unverified claims are being retired across the industry, by regulators and by platforms. Booking.com pulled its self-declared sustainability badge under regulatory pressure in 2024. Fee transparency went federal in 2025. The direction of travel is one way: claims give way to definitions, and self-description gives way to proof.

The properties that will own this segment are the ones that get specific before they are forced to. Publish the policy. Name the species you actually serve. Price the welcome like a service instead of a filter. Specificity is free, it is legally safer than the vague claim, and it is the only differentiation left in a market where every property from a motorway motel to a palace wears the same two words.

Sources

1. Federal Trade Commission, Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, effective 12 May 2025. FTC guidance and FAQ.
2. Office of the Texas Attorney General, settlement with Hyatt Hotels, 30 December 2025. Press release.
3. Office of the Texas Attorney General, $9.5 million settlement with Booking.com. Press release.
4. Colorado Protections Against Deceptive Pricing Practices Act (HB25-1090), C.R.S. § 6-1-737, effective 1 January 2026. Colorado General Assembly.
5. Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative, 2021 report: reported pet damage rates and average repair costs. Full report.
6. Study in Anthrozoös on property damage in pet and non-pet households. Anthrozoös (Taylor & Francis).
7. Propertymark, "Renting with pets" survey on property damage by pets, adults and children. Propertymark.
8. PwC Hospitality Directions, US RevPAR outlook. PwC Hospitality & Leisure.
9. UK Renters' Rights Act 2025: provisions on pets in residential tenancies. legislation.gov.uk.
10. Booking.com withdrawal of its self-declared Travel Sustainable programme, March 2024, under regulatory pressure. Skift.