Pricing··13 min read
How to Price Your Dog Boarding Services in India
Set boarding rates that protect your margin without losing bookings — cost-plus baseline, AC tiering, weekend surge, and city benchmarks for 2026.
By Sunny Luthra
Set boarding rates that protect your margin without losing bookings — cost-plus baseline, AC tiering, weekend surge, and city benchmarks for 2026.
By Sunny Luthra
The single most expensive mistake new boarding operators in India make is pricing by gut feel. Someone calls and asks "how much per night?" — the operator looks at the place down the road that charges ₹500, panics, and undercuts to ₹450. Six months later, they're working 14-hour days at 70% occupancy and still losing money.
This article shows you how to set prices that protect your margin: a cost-plus floor, a market ceiling that varies by city and tier, surge pricing that parents accept, and a 30-day price test you can actually run on next month's bookings.
Key takeaways
- A 10-kennel tier-1 facility's fully-loaded cost is ~₹1,545 per kennel-night at 60% occupancy — pricing below that is subsidising customers with your own savings.
- 2026 city benchmarks for medium dogs (mid-tier): Pune ₹800–1,200, Bangalore ₹900–1,400, Mumbai ₹1,000–2,000, Delhi NCR ₹800–1,500, Hyderabad ₹700–1,200, Kolkata ₹700–1,100.
- Surge of 15–25% on weekends and 25–50% on Diwali, Christmas, and summer-vacation weeks is industry standard and accepted by parents — provided you publish it in advance.
- Run a 30-day +10% price test on one tier each quarter. Most boardings end the year 25–40% above their starting price with no measurable damage to occupancy.
For the broader business context, see running a dog boarding business in India.
Here's the pattern that closes year-one boardings:
"The place near me charges ₹500. I'll do ₹450 and win on price. I can always raise later."
Two problems. First, you cannot always raise later — once parents are anchored to ₹450, the same parents who'll happily pay ₹950 to a new boarding will balk at your ₹650. Second, ₹450 isn't cheap; it's unprofitable. The operator down the road may be operating at 5% margin or losing money themselves. You don't beat the market by copying somebody who hasn't done the math either.
The right way to price has two anchors: a floor (the lowest price at which you don't lose money on each booking) and a ceiling (the highest price your city and your tier will support without depressing conversion). Your published price sits in the upper third of that band. Below it, you're subsidising your customers with your own savings.
Take a 10-kennel facility in a tier-1 metro running at 60% occupancy. That's roughly 180 paid kennel-nights per month. Now allocate every monthly cost to a per-kennel-night basis.
Direct costs (vary with occupancy):
| Item | Per night |
|---|---|
| Food (mix of own-supplied and parent-supplied) | ₹70–100 |
| Cleaning supplies, water | ₹30–40 |
| Electricity attributable to occupancy (lights, fans, AC if used) | ₹40–80 |
| Vet reserve (₹8K/month / 180 nights) | ₹45 |
| Direct total | ₹185–265 |
Allocated fixed costs (you pay them whether or not the kennel is full):
| Item | Monthly | Per kennel-night at 60% occupancy |
|---|---|---|
| Rent | ₹1,25,000 | ₹695 |
| Staff payroll | ₹90,000 | ₹500 |
| Marketing | ₹17,500 | ₹100 |
| Insurance + software + tools | ₹12,000 | ₹65 |
| Allocated fixed total | — | ~₹1,360 |
That's a per-night fully-loaded cost of roughly ₹1,545 per kennel-night at 60% occupancy. At 75% occupancy (peak), the allocated portion drops to ~₹1,090, and your fully-loaded cost falls to ~₹1,330.
A few things to notice:
The cost-plus floor is whatever covers fully-loaded cost. The cost-plus target is fully-loaded cost + 15–20% margin — that's where most healthy boardings price.
For the full margin math at different occupancy and price points, see what those prices do to your margins (coming soon).
Now overlay the city. These are 2026 published rates for medium dogs at mid-tier facilities, drawn from Google Business Profile listings and operator-reported pricing across the metros.
| City | Non-AC | AC | Suite / Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pune | ₹800–1,000 | ₹1,000–1,200 | ₹1,500+ |
| Bangalore | ₹900–1,100 | ₹1,100–1,400 | ₹1,800+ |
| Mumbai | ₹1,000–1,500 | ₹1,500–2,000 | ₹2,500+ |
| Delhi NCR | ₹800–1,200 | ₹1,100–1,500 | ₹1,800+ |
| Hyderabad | ₹700–1,000 | ₹1,000–1,200 | ₹1,500+ |
| Kolkata | ₹700–900 | ₹900–1,100 | ₹1,400+ |
Notes:
The mistake operators make with tiering is to call the cheap option "Basic". That's an apology — and parents respond by suspecting Basic is unsafe. Don't apologise for your floor.
Better names: Standard / Comfort / Premium (or Resident / Comfort / Suite). What goes into each:
| Tier | What's included |
|---|---|
| Standard | Individual kennel, two play sessions per day, two meals, daily care log, photo update at 7pm |
| Comfort | All of Standard + AC kennel, three play sessions, custom feeding schedule, two photo updates per day |
| Premium / Suite | All of Comfort + larger kennel/suite, webcam access, 1:1 walks, daily report card, parent's choice of food brand |
Two principles:
For a deeper conversation on which tier to push hardest in marketing, see filling those slots: getting clients.
Different products. Don't price them off a single per-night number.
| Service | Typical 2026 range |
|---|---|
| Half-day daycare | ₹400–600 |
| Full-day daycare | ₹600–900 |
| Overnight (Standard) | ₹800–1,200 |
| Overnight (AC) | ₹1,000–1,500 |
| Long-stay (7+ nights) | ₹700–1,200/night |
| Special-needs / senior dogs | +25–50% on the tier rate |
Long-stay should always offer a discount versus a single overnight — typically 10–15% off the night rate when the booking is 7+ nights. Below that, you're not pricing for the operational ease (one drop-off, one pick-up, predictable feeding) of a long-stay. Above 20%, you're giving away the upside.
Daycare should be priced more aggressively than overnight on a per-hour basis. Why? Because daycare fills the gaps in your overnight inventory (mornings between checkouts, weekday capacity) and turns under-utilised hours into revenue. A well-run boarding adds 25–40% to its overnight revenue from daycare without adding a single new kennel.
Surge pricing in this category is normal, expected by parents, and the difference between a profitable and a struggling year-one boarding.
The standard surges:
| Window | Surge | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Weekends (Fri/Sat) | +15–25% | Highest demand, lowest substitutability |
| Public holidays + long weekends | +25–35% | Travel demand spikes |
| Diwali week | +30–50% | Highest single-week demand window in the year |
| Christmas / New Year week | +25–40% | Travel + corporate breaks |
| Summer vacation (May–Jun in north India) | +15–25% | Family travel |
Communicating a surge without sounding greedy:
A monsoon discount (5–10% off in July–August in cities where occupancy genuinely drops) is fine and makes financial sense. Don't make it a habit; once parents are anchored to a discount they expect it next year too.
Three discount structures actually grow revenue. Most others lose you money.
Multi-dog discount: 10–15% off the second and subsequent dogs from the same household. Doesn't reduce your floor much (food and care logs are mostly per-dog, but kennel and play time are shared), and parents with two dogs generate ~80% of the marginal revenue at half the marketing cost.
Repeat-customer perk: a free daycare day after every five paid overnights. Free daycare costs you ~₹100 of direct cost; the perception is ₹600+ of value, and it shifts a parent from "shopping every booking" to "default to my boarding".
Referral credit: ₹500 off the next booking for both the referrer and the referred parent. Costs you nothing if the referred parent is new; turns warm leads into actual bookings.
What not to do:
Mid-article note: Setting tiered prices, daycare bundles, surge windows, and per-customer discounts in a spreadsheet is workable in month one. By month four it isn't — too many overrides, too many "what did we charge them last time?" moments. bos.dog encodes pricing tiers, surge windows, and per-customer discounts directly in the booking flow, so the price your customer sees is always the right one.
The fastest way to find out if you're under-priced is to run a 30-day test on new bookings only.
Setup:
What you'll usually find:
If revenue holds at +10% price with –10% volume, you were under-priced. Keep the new price. If revenue drops more than 5%, you were at the ceiling. Roll back.
Run this test once per quarter on different tiers. Most boardings I've seen end up 25–40% above their starting price by month 12, with no measurable damage to occupancy.
The trick is to give plenty of notice and frame the change as the boarding investing in something parents asked for.
Sample WhatsApp message:
Hi [Parent first name], a quick heads-up. From 1st July, our overnight rates are going up by ~10% — to ₹1,050 (Standard) and ₹1,300 (AC).
The increase is going into one full-time senior caretaker we're adding to our weekend rota and into upgrading the play area surface. Both come from feedback you and other parents have shared.
Bookings made before 1st July at the current rate are honoured at the old price, even if the stay is later. As a thank-you for your loyalty, your next two bookings (any date) are at your existing rate as well.
Any questions, just reply here. Always good to talk.
— Sunny
The pattern: clear new price, real reason, grandfathered existing bookings, a small carve-out for repeat parents. Parents will accept a 10% hike with this framing far more than a 5% hike announced after the fact.
For the article on what those new prices do to your margin once the volume settles, see profit margins and revenue benchmarks (coming soon).
If you've read this far and your published rates are below the city benchmark for your tier, you're almost certainly leaving money on the table. The 30-day test is the cheapest way to find out. And if your booking flow doesn't already encode tiers, surge windows, and per-customer discounts cleanly, that's exactly what bos.dog handles — so you can change pricing once and have it apply everywhere automatically.
For a medium dog at a mid-tier facility, ₹800–1,200 per night non-AC and ₹1,100–1,500 AC across most tier-1 cities, with Mumbai sitting 20–30% higher and Kolkata/Hyderabad sitting 10–15% lower. Use cost-plus to set your floor and the city benchmark to set your ceiling.
Yes — typically 25–40% more. AC adds real running cost (₹50–80/night in summer alone), real value (parents care about it for senior and short-coat dogs), and it self-segments into a higher-margin tier. Don't include AC for free in the standard rate.
A flat per-night rate works for medium dogs (8–25 kg). For dogs above 25 kg, add a ₹100–200/night premium for food and handling. For dogs below 8 kg, keep the rate the same or offer a small discount only as a multi-dog promotion — pricing them lower trains parents to expect a "small dog price tier" you don't actually want to maintain.
Indian pet parents accept 15–25% surge on weekends and 25–50% on Diwali, Christmas, and major holiday weeks — provided you publish it in advance. The pushback comes from surprise surcharges, not the surge itself.
Every six months at minimum. Every quarter if your costs are moving (new lease, new staff, energy price changes). The 30-day test gives you data without committing to a permanent change.
Don't. First-booking discounts anchor parents to a number that hurts your second booking. Offer a free upgrade on the first booking (AC at non-AC rate, or a free daycare day) instead — same effective discount, no anchoring on the lower price.