Blog · Pet Boarding
How AI Handles the Holiday Boarding Rush:
Never Lose a Reservation Again
February 25, 2026 · 6 min read
The two weeks before Thanksgiving is the Super Bowl of pet boarding. Every kennel in town fills up. Pet parents who procrastinated are panic-calling facilities. Your phone rings off the hook while your staff is doing morning feedings, administering medications, and cleaning runs. You know you still have 4 open kennels for that Wednesday–Sunday window. But your team can't get to the phone fast enough, and those 4 runs stay empty.
The Holiday Problem in Numbers
Holiday boarding demand follows a predictable pattern. Call volume starts climbing 3–4 weeks before a major holiday and peaks in the final 10 days. For a typical 30-kennel facility:
- Normal daily calls: 15–25
- Pre-holiday daily calls: 45–75 (3x normal)
- Average boarding call duration: 8–12 minutes (intake is complex)
- Staff available to answer: Usually 1 person, sometimes 0 during feedings
- Maximum calls handled by 1 person/day: ~30 (with nothing else to do)
- Calls missed during peak: 15–45/day
- Holiday nightly rate (with premium): $55–$85/night
- Revenue at risk per holiday season: $15,000–$30,000
These aren't theoretical numbers. If your facility has runs available and callers can't get through, every empty run during a holiday week at $65/night for 5 nights is $325 in revenue that simply evaporates. Four empty runs over Thanksgiving = $1,300 lost in one week. Multiply by six major holiday periods per year, and you're looking at $8,000–$30,000 in annual revenue sitting on the table.
Why Holidays Break the Traditional Model
During a normal week, your front desk person can handle phones between other tasks. Holidays destroy this model for three reasons:
Call Volume Triples While Staff Shrinks
You have more animals in house, which means more feedings, more walks, more medications, more kennel cleanings. At the exact moment phone volume triples, your staff has less time to answer it. The math doesn't work.
Anxious Owners Flood the Lines
Owners who dropped off their pets for holiday boarding call for updates. "Is she eating?" "Did he sleep okay?" These calls are 3–5 minutes each and they stack up. During Thanksgiving week, status calls can consume 40–50% of your phone time, blocking new booking calls from getting through.
Evening Booking Calls Go Unanswered
Pet parents plan vacations at night. They finalize their flights at 9 PM and immediately think about the dog. Your kennel closes at 6. By the time you return their voicemail tomorrow, they've booked the competitor who had online booking or an AI that answered at 9 PM.
How AI Changes the Holiday Equation
AI phone agents built for pet boarding solve the holiday capacity problem by handling unlimited simultaneous calls, 24/7, with full access to your availability data. Here's what that looks like during a holiday rush:
10 Calls at Once? No Problem. Your busiest Monday morning before Christmas, 10 people call simultaneously. A human can handle 1. An answering service might handle 3. Vox handles all 10, each getting a personalized conversation with real-time availability checks. Zero hold time. Zero dropped calls.
Instant Availability Answers. "Do you have anything open December 22 through 28?" Vox checks your kennel management system in real time and gives an immediate answer: "We have one standard run and two luxury suites available for those dates. The standard run is $55 per night and the luxury suite is $75 per night. Would you like to book?" No callbacks. No "let me check."
Complete Intake on the First Call. Vox collects pet name, breed, weight, vaccination dates, feeding schedule (brand, portion, times), medications, behavioral notes, and emergency vet. The booking is confirmed and complete before the caller hangs up. No follow-up paperwork needed at drop-off.
Status Calls Handled Automatically. "How's Buddy doing?" Vox pulls the latest update your staff entered—"Buddy had a great day! He ate all his breakfast and lunch, played in the yard for 45 minutes, and is resting comfortably." The anxious owner is reassured. Your staff stays focused on animal care.
The Waitlist Advantage
When your facility fills up for a holiday, every call after that is a dead end—unless you have a waitlist system. Vox automatically adds callers to a prioritized waitlist when capacity is full. When a cancellation opens a run (and cancellations always happen), Vox contacts waitlisted pet parents in order: "Great news! A standard run just opened up for December 23 through 28. Would you like me to book it?"
Without AI, a cancellation during the holiday rush often goes unfilled because your staff is too busy to call through a manual waitlist. With Vox, the run is re-booked within minutes of the cancellation. That's $325+ in recovered revenue per cancellation event.
Vaccination Compliance: No More Drop-Off Surprises
One of the worst moments in pet boarding is turning away a dog at drop-off because their bordetella vaccine expired two weeks ago. The owner is upset. The run goes empty. Everyone loses.
Vox captures vaccination dates during booking and automatically sends reminders when a required vaccine will expire before the boarding date. "Hi, this is [Your Kennel Name]. We have Bella booked for December 23rd, but her bordetella vaccination expires December 15th. She'll need an updated vaccine before drop-off. Would you like us to send you a reminder the week before?" This eliminates the #1 cause of day-of boarding cancellations.
The Holiday ROI
During a single holiday week, 3–5 additional bookings at $325 average = $975–$1,625. That pays for 2–3 months of Vox. And Vox works year-round—not just holidays. See how Vox works for pet boarding →
No More Empty Runs During the Holidays
Set up in 20 minutes. Books reservations, manages waitlists, handles owner check-ins. Every call answered 24/7.