Why catteries hide prices, and why it costs them
Cattery pricing has a few moving parts, so a lot of sites give up and write "please contact us for a quote". The owner planning a fortnight in August then has to ring three catteries to compare, and in practice they ring one, book it, and you never knew they existed.
Nightly boarding is one of the easiest things in the pet world to publish honestly. You have pen types, you have a nightly rate, you have a sharing rate and you have a few extras. That is a table. Here is how to build it so it answers the question and still leaves room for the cases that are genuinely different.
Start with the unit of charge
Before the table, one line stating how you charge, because catteries differ and owners have been caught out.
Per night or per day. Whether the day of arrival and the day of collection are both charged. What the arrival and collection windows are, and what a late collection costs. Whether there is a minimum stay, and whether that changes over peak dates.
Three sentences. It removes the most common billing complaint before it happens.
Build the table around pen type
Down the side, the pen types you actually have, named the way you name them and matched to the photos on the pen page: standard pen with covered outdoor run, larger family pen, penthouse or deluxe if you have one, and any heated or quiet block you charge differently for.
Across the top, the number of cats: one cat, two sharing, three sharing. Sharing is where catteries lose money by not publishing, because the family with three cats assumes it is triple and books somewhere that showed them it is not.
In the cells, the nightly rate. Where the rate changes by season, either add a peak column or state the peak uplift and the dates in a line under the table. Do not run two separate price pages for peak and off-peak; owners find the wrong one.
Each pen type row links to its photos. An owner comparing rates is really comparing pens, and the price only means something next to the picture of the space.
Price the extras as their own lines
Underneath the table, one line each, priced.
Medication administration, if you charge for it, and whether that is per cat or per dose. Grooming or brushing for long-haired cats. Flea or worm treatment on arrival for a cat that arrives untreated. Food you supply where an owner does not bring their own. Collection and delivery, if you offer it, with the radius. Bank holiday or Christmas surcharges, with the dates named.
Honest extras read as professional. Extras discovered at collection read as a sting.
Say what is included
Cats are not dogs, and owners do not always know what a cattery night covers. State it: heating, litter and trays, daily cleaning, individual attention, feeding to their routine, and the medication you handle as standard. If your standard nightly rate already covers giving a tablet twice a day, saying so is worth more than a discount.
Deposits, cancellation and peak booking
Publish the deposit, what it is for, and when the balance is due. Publish the cancellation window and what happens inside it, particularly over the peak weeks where a cancelled pen is a pen you cannot refill.
Peak season is the whole business for most catteries, so put the peak dates on the price page and say when booking opens for them. Owners who know they must book August in February will book August in February.
Make the platform and the page agree
Set the rates up in Revelation Pets, Gingr, PetExec or Kennel Connection first, with pen types, sharing rates, seasonal rates and extras configured there, then write the page from the platform. An owner who reads a rate on the site, books online and gets an invoice for the same number has had a good experience before the cat arrives. Where the platform prices the stay in the booking flow, the total is confirmed before they commit.
Keep it editable
Cattery rates move at least annually, and peak dates move every year. A table hard-coded into a page needs a developer, so it goes stale and quotes last year over the phone. Built as records with a field per pen type and occupancy, you change a cell and the page re-renders. Update the peak dates the same afternoon you set them in the booking platform.
The stays you genuinely cannot table
A cat needing insulin at fixed times, a very long stay, a household of five cats, a cat with a condition that needs discussing with your vet. The table handles the ordinary stay, which is the great majority, and one line routes the rest: a short form or a phone number for complex or long stays. That is far better than pricing nothing, because it prices the stays that are ordinary and turns the others into a conversation rather than a bounce.
Where this sits
Prices per night and for multi-cat families, editable by you, are one of the must-haves on every cattery website we build, and price tables by service and size run through our pet business websites generally. Our own packages are on pricing. Publish the ordinary night, publish the sharing rate, publish the peak dates, and the August phone calls turn into August bookings.