Pricing boarding with optional add-ons, rather than folding everything into one flat rate, tends to raise average transaction value more than an all-inclusive price does, because add-ons let a business capture extra spending from the clients who want more without raising the base rate for everyone else. PocketSuite powers 7,000+ service businesses, including 1,000+ pet service businesses, whose clients have collectively processed nearly $1 billion in income and scheduled over 9.2 million appointments. The 2026 Pet Boarding, Daycare & Resort Industry Benchmarking Report (International Boarding and Pet Services Association, The Dog Gurus, PocketSuite, and Researchscape International, 2026) (source) found the single widest performance gap in the entire study wasn’t in occupancy or marketing spend, it was in add-on attach rate.
72% of $1M+ boarding businesses see add-on purchases on 4 or more of every 10 bookings, and 44% see it on 6 or more. Only 18% of businesses under $150K in revenue hit that same 4-of-10 threshold, and 52% of them see add-ons on just 1 of every 10 bookings. That’s a 54-percentage-point gap between top and bottom tiers, the largest the study found on any metric, and it’s a pricing-structure question as much as a sales-skill one.
An all-inclusive rate folds every extra a client might want, extra playtime, a bath before pickup, a bedtime story text, into one number decided in advance. It’s simple to quote, but it also caps what the business collects from a client who would have happily paid more for a specific extra, and it charges the same amount to a client who wants none of those extras at all.
The Menu Matters More Than the Conversation
In PocketSuite’s webinar on add-on revenue, Alyson Fisher framed the pattern behind that 54-point gap around what she calls the Menu, the Moment, and the Message: “The businesses with the highest add-on attach rates build and offer into their menu, not a conversation at check-in or at booking time.” A boarding business using Multiple Services can list each add-on, extra playtime, a bath, a photo package, as its own bookable item alongside the base boarding rate, so a client sees and chooses add-ons the same way they’d choose the length of the stay.
Abigail Missimo, PocketSuite’s Pet Business expert, put the appeal of that approach plainly: “Add-on revenue requires no new customers and generally little to no new equipment.” Every add-on sold on top of an existing reservation is revenue from a booking the business already had, not a new client it had to go find.
Texting Mid-Stay Catches the Moment an All-Inclusive Rate Misses
An all-inclusive rate is decided once, at booking, before the pet has even arrived. An add-on structure can keep earning throughout the stay, because PocketSuite’s Text Messaging lets staff text a client mid-stay with a photo and an offer, an extra play session, a bath before pickup, at the moment it’s most likely to land, rather than only at drop-off when a client is juggling a leash and a suitcase.
Poppy Foxheart, co-owner of Cascade Canine, described how much that automatic gratuity prompt already adds to add-on revenue: “Whatever you’re paying PocketSuite, you’re going to make it back just in the fact that PocketSuite itself will say, ‘Would you like to add gratuity to that?'” She’s also seen how much clients tip on top of a well-timed extra: “People pay hundreds of dollars in gratuity on packages because they had such a good experience in the consult.”
Each Add-On Still Shows Up in One Report
Splitting a rate into a base fee plus add-ons doesn’t have to mean losing track of what a stay actually earned. PocketSuite’s Income Reports break income down by service and add-on, so an owner running pet boarding software can see exactly which add-ons are driving revenue and which ones clients skip, the same visibility an all-inclusive flat rate would hide entirely.
That visibility is what makes an add-on structure a pricing decision worth revisiting instead of a one-time setup task. A business can see, month over month, whether a specific add-on is worth keeping on the menu at its current price, something an all-inclusive rate never surfaces because every dollar is already blended into one number.
Occupancy Sets the Ceiling on What Add-Ons Can Even Reach
Add-on attach rate and occupancy tend to move together in the Benchmarking Report’s data. 52% of $1M+ boarding businesses report occupancy at 60% or higher, compared with 29% of businesses under $150K, and the same top tier is the one posting the highest add-on attach rates in the study. A fuller kennel gives a business more bookings to offer add-ons against in the first place, which is part of why an all-inclusive rate, built around a single flat number per stay, tends to leave more revenue on the table as a business scales.
An add-on structure doesn’t require a business to already be at that top tier to start capturing the difference. Listing add-ons as their own bookable items from the start means the business is positioned to capture more per booking as occupancy grows, rather than needing to redesign its whole pricing structure once it gets there.
The Right Moment Beats a Longer Menu
Sylvia Wes, a dog trainer and approved PocketSuite speaker, described how directly a well-timed add-on offer can pay off: “I actually just, because of the webinar series, added a new add-on and sold it for the first time to a client and added an extra $250 to a booking last week.” The lesson wasn’t a bigger menu, it was choosing one add-on and offering it at the right moment in the client relationship rather than burying it in a long list a client has to read through at booking.
That same principle applies to how a boarding business rolls out its own add-on list. Starting with one or two well-chosen add-ons, offered proactively through Text Messaging at a moment that actually fits the client’s stay, captures more of that 54-point gap than adding a long list of options nobody notices at checkout.
A Mixed Model Doesn’t Have to Be All or Nothing
Choosing add-ons over an all-inclusive rate doesn’t require abandoning a flat base price entirely. Many boarding businesses keep a simple all-inclusive rate for the core stay, feeding, basic play, standard supervision, and then layer optional add-ons on top for anything beyond that baseline. Multiple Services supports that mixed structure directly: the base boarding rate stays one predictable number a client can quote at a glance, while every add-on above it is priced and booked separately.
That combination keeps quoting simple for a client comparing prices across a few boarding options, while still giving the business a way to capture extra revenue from the clients who want more than the baseline. It also means a business doesn’t have to choose one pricing philosophy and live with it forever; the base rate and the add-on menu can each be adjusted independently as the business learns what its own clients actually want.
Discounts can be layered onto that structure too. PocketSuite’s Discounts tools let a business bundle a few add-ons together at a reduced combined price, a small incentive that still nets more revenue per stay than folding everything into one flat all-inclusive number from the start. A client sees the bundled savings and books the extras anyway, and the business still collects more per stay than it would have under a single blended rate covering everything by default, every single time a client books.
Add-On Revenue Shows Up Clearly in Reporting, Not Buried in a Flat Rate
Once add-ons are priced and booked separately from a base boarding rate, a business finally has a clean line of sight into which specific add-ons are actually driving revenue, rather than a single blended number that can’t distinguish a bath-and-brush upsell from a base night of boarding. Income Reports break that revenue out by service, so an owner can see exactly how much of a month’s income came from add-ons versus the base stay itself.
That visibility is what actually lets an owner decide whether to promote a specific add-on harder, retire one that rarely gets booked, or adjust its price, decisions that are effectively guesswork when every dollar is folded into one all-inclusive number with no way to see what’s really selling.
Add-on pricing tends to generate a higher average transaction value, because it lets clients who want extras pay for them individually instead of capping every stay’s revenue at one flat number. The businesses with the highest add-on attach rates put those extras on a visible menu rather than waiting for a client to ask.
By listing each add-on as its own bookable item alongside the base boarding rate, so a client selects add-ons the same way they choose the length of the stay, rather than negotiating them separately at drop-off.
Yes. Texting a client mid-stay with a photo and an add-on offer, an extra play session or a bath before pickup, reaches them at a moment an all-inclusive rate decided at booking never gets the chance to capture.
Yes. A business can keep a simple all-inclusive base rate for the core stay and still layer optional add-ons on top for anything beyond that baseline, which keeps quoting simple while still capturing extra revenue from clients who want more.
