The holiday rush starts before you think. For pet sitters, dog walkers, boarding facilities, and other pet care businesses, waiting until December to prepare your website for holiday bookings may mean you’re already behind.
Pet parents often make Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s travel plans weeks or even months in advance. In a Pet Sitters International survey of more than 450 professional pet-sitting businesses, nearly 90% had already started accepting holiday reservations by mid-September. More than half expected to be completely booked and unable to accept new requests at least two to three weeks before the holiday.
Your website needs to be ready while those decisions are being made. Make holiday availability, rates, deadlines, and booking information easy to find before inquiries start piling up.
If you haven’t looked at your website since summer, here’s what to check before the holiday rush arrives.
Update Your Holiday Availability Before Clients Start Asking
One of the first questions pet parents have during the holidays is also one of the simplest: Are you available?
Don’t make them email, call, or submit a booking request only to learn that Thanksgiving is full or you have only a few Christmas openings left. Update your website as availability changes so clients have realistic expectations before contacting you.
This doesn’t mean publishing a detailed calendar of every open appointment. A simple notice can communicate that Thanksgiving availability is limited, Christmas reservations are open, or certain dates are already fully booked.
Put that information somewhere people will actually see it. Your homepage, primary service page, booking page, or a temporary holiday announcement near your main call to action are better choices than burying the update in a blog post.
Seasonal demand is predictable. Boarding facilities, for example, experience sharp demand increases around Thanksgiving and Christmas, with holiday stays often extending beyond the holiday itself as clients stagger travel dates. Your website should reflect that reality.
Give Pet Parents a Real Booking Deadline
“Contact us for holiday availability” puts all the work on the client.
A visible cutoff date gives them something concrete to act on.
If December 10 is the final day to request Christmas pet sitting, say so. If Thanksgiving reservations close when capacity is reached, explain that bookings are limited and encourage clients to reserve by a specific date.
The deadline should appear near the booking button or holiday information, not hidden in terms and conditions.
Clear deadlines also help your team. They reduce unnecessary inquiries after you’ve reached capacity and give clients a natural reason to stop postponing their reservation.
Your cutoff date should reflect how your business operates. Don’t manufacture urgency with an arbitrary deadline. If you need time for meet-and-greets, key exchanges, intake paperwork, vaccination verification, or scheduling, build that into the date you publish.
Put Holiday Rates Where Clients Can Find Them
Holiday pricing should not be a surprise at checkout.
Pet Sitters International found that 67% of the pet sitters in its holiday survey charged a holiday surcharge. If your business charges differently for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, or other high-demand dates, make those policies clear before a pet parent begins the booking process.
The best place depends on your website. If your regular rates appear on individual service pages, include the holiday surcharge there. If you have a pricing or policies page, update it and add a visible note on your booking page directing clients to the information.
Be specific about which dates count as holidays. “Holiday rates apply” is less useful than explaining the dates covered and whether the additional charge applies per visit, per night, or per reservation.
Clear pricing helps clients make informed decisions and saves your team from answering the same question repeatedly during one of your busiest periods.
Make Sure Booking Is Easy on a Phone
Holiday bookings don’t necessarily happen while someone is sitting at a desktop computer carefully researching pet care.
A pet parent may realize during lunch that they still haven’t booked a sitter for Thanksgiving. Someone may compare boarding options on their phone while coordinating Christmas travel with family. If your booking process is slow, confusing, or hard to complete on a small screen, you’re creating friction when demand is highest.
Open your website on your own phone and go through the process as if you were a new client.
Can you immediately find the booking button? Is the text readable without zooming? Are form fields easy to complete? Does anything overlap or disappear on mobile? Does the confirmation make it obvious that the request was received?
Your holiday website doesn’t need more bells and whistles. It needs fewer obstacles between “I need pet care” and “I’ve requested my dates.”
Test Every Booking Form Before the Rush
A booking form can look perfectly fine and still be broken.
Submit every important form on your website before holiday demand ramps up. Use both a phone and desktop computer. Make sure required fields work, confirmation messages appear, notifications reach the correct email address, and any scheduling or booking integrations function properly.
Then check what happens after submission.
Does the client know whether the reservation is confirmed or merely requested? Do they know when they’ll hear from you? If new clients need a consultation before booking, is that next step explained?
During peak season, a broken form isn’t just a technical inconvenience. It can mean losing a booking you could have accepted.
Give Your Main Service Page a 15-Minute Holiday Update
You don’t need to redesign your website for Christmas.
In about 15 minutes, you can make your primary holiday service page considerably more useful. Start by reading the page as a pet parent planning holiday travel. Update your availability message and booking deadline. Confirm that rates and holiday surcharges are accurate. Check the service area and make sure your booking button goes to the right place.
Then look for seasonal questions that aren’t answered. Are overnight visits available on Christmas Eve? Does your boarding facility have different drop-off hours on Thanksgiving? Are new clients accepted during peak periods? Is there a minimum number of visits?
Add the information clients repeatedly ask your team.
This is the same principle behind Barketing’s Pet Business Website Summer Prep Checklist: your website should change as your clients and business needs change. Seasonal website maintenance isn’t about decorating your homepage. It’s about keeping the information people need accurate and up to date.
Don’t Let an Outdated Website Create Holiday Chaos
The worst time to discover an outdated rate, broken form, or incorrect availability notice is when you’re already juggling a full holiday schedule.
Before the rush, review the entire path a client takes from finding your website to requesting care. Your availability should be current. Booking deadlines should be visible. Holiday pricing should be clear. Mobile booking should be easy. Forms should work. Clients should also understand what happens after they click submit.
These are small website updates, but during the busiest weeks of the year, they can prevent unnecessary emails, confused clients, missed inquiries, and extra administrative work.
If updating your website is one more task you don’t have time to handle before the holidays, Barketing Solutions’ Monthly Webmaster Plans provide ongoing website support for pet care businesses. Instead of trying to remember every seasonal update yourself, someone can help keep your website current as your availability, services, and business needs change.
The holiday rush may start earlier than most people expect. Your website should be ready before it does.
Erika Godwin is the President of Barketing Solutions and the Co-Founder and CMO of ProPet Software, an industry-leading kennel management software. Erika has over 8 years of experience with WordPress and graduated from Elmira College in 2009 with a BS, Business Administration- Marketing and Management. View Erika’s Full Bio.
