The US Dog Boarding and Pet Lodging Market

How big the boarding segment really is, how many staffed facilities there are, what a night costs, and how far demand swings between February and July, built from Census, BLS and published industry data.

KKBy Kashif Nazir Khan, Founder of Pupline

Updated September 1, 2026·11 min read

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The US pet grooming and boarding industry is worth $11.3 billion in 2026 (IBISWorld, 2026), and the boarding slice of it is put at about $5.28 billion for 2025 (GM Insights, 2025). Federal data counts 28,121 employer pet-care establishments employing 198,402 people (BLS QCEW, 2025 annual average), a standard night of boarding runs about $40, and staffing across the industry swings 6.6% between the February trough and the July peak. This report covers what the data does and does not say about boarding, kennels and pet lodging specifically, and what those numbers mean if you run one.

It is the boarding-specific companion to our pet care industry statistics report, which maps businesses, jobs, wages and growth across all 50 states. That report covers the whole of the federal pet-care category. This one narrows to overnight care, and adds the sizing, facility-mix, rate and seasonality data that a general industry report cannot carry. Consumer prices for every service sit in our pet care cost report.

Dog boarding and pet lodging at a glance

All figures as of September 2026, using the latest release of each source. See methodology and sources for what each measure counts.

Why there is no clean "boarding industry" number

Anyone who tells you exactly how many dog boarding facilities operate in the United States is extrapolating. The federal statistical system does not have a boarding code. Boarding kennels, doggy daycares, groomers, pet sitters, dog walkers and trainers all file under a single industry, NAICS 812910, Pet Care (except Veterinary) Services, so the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics can tell you a great deal about pet care as a whole and nothing at all about boarding on its own.

That leaves two kinds of data, and it is worth being blunt about which is which:

• Federal data (Census County Business Patterns, BLS QCEW and OEWS) is a census or near-census of employers. It is precise, it is free, and it covers the whole pet-care category rather than boarding alone.
• Private segment sizing (IBISWorld, GM Insights and similar firms) does isolate boarding, but the numbers are modelled estimates, and different firms using different scopes produce very different answers. Treat them as a range, not a fact.

Everything below is labelled with which of the two it came from. Where we could not verify a figure from the source that produced it, we left it out and said so.

Market size and growth

The most reliable public sizing for the segment that boarding sits in is IBISWorld's US Pet Grooming and Boarding industry report, which puts industry revenue at $11.3 billion in 2026, growing 1.6% in 2026 after a 3.6% compound annual growth rate over the five years to 2026. IBISWorld also counts about 199,000 businesses in that industry as of 2026, a count growing at an 8.2% compound annual rate since 2021 (IBISWorld, 2026).

For boarding on its own, GM Insights puts the US pet boarding services market at $5.28 billion in 2025, inside a global market of $12 billion in 2025, forecast to reach $12.9 billion in 2026 and $23 billion by 2035, a 6.6% compound annual growth rate from 2026 to 2035 (GM Insights, 2025 with forecasts to 2035). Those two estimates are at least consistent with each other: a $5.28 billion boarding segment sits comfortably inside an $11.3 billion grooming-and-boarding total, with grooming making up most of the rest.

Zooming out, the American Pet Products Association reports $158 billion of total US pet spending in 2025, up 3.7%, and projects $165 billion in 2026. Its "Other Services" category, which bundles boarding with grooming, training, sitting, walking and insurance, is projected at $14.9 billion in 2026 (APPA, 2025; APPA industry trends, 2026 projection).

A note on pet ownership figures, because they are routinely mixed up: APPA's National Pet Owners Survey and the AVMA's Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook use different methodologies and report different numbers. APPA's 2026 State of the Industry report cites 95 million US pet-owning households from its 2025 survey (APPA, 2025). AVMA's household ownership rates are lower and are not interchangeable with that figure, so we do not blend them here.

Establishments, employment and payroll

This is where federal data earns its keep. The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages covers essentially every establishment with employees, and its 2025 annual averages for private NAICS 812910 nationally are:

Source: BLS QCEW annual files for 2019 and 2025, private ownership, national totals for NAICS 812910.

Six years took the industry from 20,035 employer sites to 28,121, and the wage bill almost doubled. Growth did not stop with the pandemic pet boom either: between 2024 and 2025 establishments rose 3.7%, employment 3.8% and total wages 7.2% (BLS QCEW, 2025).

Two other measures are worth keeping straight, because they are often quoted as if they were the same thing:

• The Census County Business Patterns count for 2023, the latest CBP release, is 25,551 establishments, 175,116 employees and $4.91 billion of annual payroll (Census CBP, 2023). CBP counts establishments active in the March reference week; QCEW counts unemployment-insurance accounts averaged across the year, and its 2025 data is two years newer. The gap between 25,551 and 28,121 is mostly those two differences, not a contradiction.
• Average pay per worker of $31,715 (QCEW, 2025) is lower than the $35,360 median annual wage for animal caretakers in the BLS OEWS May 2025 release, the figure used in our industry statistics report. The industry average is dragged down by part-time and seasonal staff, which boarding uses heavily. BLS projects animal caretaker employment to grow a further 11% from 2024 to 2034 (BLS OEWS, May 2025).

One more comparison frames the whole segment. IBISWorld counts roughly 199,000 businesses in pet grooming and boarding (2026); QCEW counts 28,121 with employees (2025). If both are close to right, about 86% of the businesses in this segment have no payroll at all. The typical competitor is a person, not a facility.

Facility mix: kennels, home boarding and pet resorts

Federal data cannot label a facility as a kennel, but it can show you the size distribution, and size is a decent proxy for facility type. An overnight operation needs cover seven days a week, which is hard below roughly ten staff. Here is how the 25,551 pet-care establishments split by employment (Census CBP, 2023):

Source: Census County Business Patterns, 2023, NAICS 812910, US totals. Larger size classes are withheld for disclosure reasons.

Only 22.3% of establishments have 10 or more employees, and 8.1% have 20 or more. Staffed overnight facilities are a minority of an industry mostly made of one-person and two-person operations, which is consistent with how fragmented the market is: GM Insights puts the top five providers at a combined 15% of the market in 2025, the largest being PetSmart PetsHotel at 3.5% (GM Insights, 2025). There is no dominant chain to compete with in most towns.

The same source splits the market by service type, and the direction of travel matters more than the exact shares. Overnight and traditional boarding was 45.0% of market revenue in 2022 and is projected to fall to 34.0% by 2035, not because boarding shrinks but because everything around it grows faster: daycare goes from 20.0% to 29.0%, and in-home pet sitting and in-home boarding are forecast to compound at 8.2% and 8.5% a year respectively (GM Insights, 2022 baseline with forecasts to 2035).

The pet sitting and in-home boarding market

The fastest-growing part of pet lodging is the part with no kennel runs in it. In-home boarding, where the dog stays in a sitter's house, and in-home sitting, where the sitter comes to the pet, are the two highest-CAGR service types in the GM Insights forecast, and they are where most of the roughly 170,000 businesses in this segment that have no employees sit (IBISWorld's 2026 business count less QCEW's 2025 employer count). For a facility owner that cuts two ways: home boarders take the price-sensitive, single-dog, low-medical-need end of the market, and they leave behind the work that needs staff, insurance, medication handling and structured play, which is the work that supports a facility rate. Cats are the fastest-growing pet type in the same forecast, against dogs at 71.7% of the global market in 2025, which is the case for adding a proper cat wing rather than a spare room. See cattery software for how that side of the operation differs.

What a night of boarding costs

Consumer boarding prices are not published by any government source, so these come from booking platforms and cost aggregators, cross-checked in our pet care cost report:

Source: Rover, HomeGuide and Care.com boarding cost data, 2025 to 2026.

Location drives more of the spread than anything else. Rover's booking data puts a night at $63.58 in New York, $62.58 in Los Angeles, $51.83 in Chicago, $42.92 in Phoenix and $41.51 in Houston (Rover, 2025), so a coastal metro carries roughly 50% more than a Sun Belt market for the same service. After location, the levers are facility type (a run versus a suite), dog size, one-to-one care and medication handling, and the holiday premium.

Your local wage floor is the other half of that equation, and it is knowable: QCEW reports an average weekly wage of $610 in the industry nationally in 2025, and our industry statistics report has the state-by-state wage map. A market where boarding sells at $40 and caretakers cost $22 an hour is a different business from one where boarding sells at $63.

Revenue per facility: what can and cannot be known

No federal source publishes revenue for pet-care establishments outside the five-yearly Economic Census, and no public source publishes revenue per boarding facility. So here is what can be said honestly.

Payroll per establishment was about $223,800 in 2025, across an average of 7.1 employees per establishment (derived from BLS QCEW, 2025). That is the single largest cost line in a boarding business, and it is measured, not modelled.

Average revenue per business in the segment is about $57,000 if you divide IBISWorld's $11.3 billion by its 199,000 businesses (derived from IBISWorld, 2026). That number is not a facility average. It is what happens when you average a few thousand staffed facilities with a great many sole traders, and it is the clearest single indicator of how micro this market is.

For a facility, the revenue ceiling is arithmetic rather than research: runs times rate times occupancy times 365. At the $40 national standard rate, a 20-run kennel at 60% occupancy grosses about $175,000 a year, a 30-run kennel about $263,000. Occupancy is the assumption in that sentence, not a data point. We could not verify a published US occupancy rate for boarding facilities from any primary source, so replace 60% with your own booking history before you plan on it. To build the cost side out properly, use our pet business startup cost calculator.

Occupancy and seasonality

Occupancy itself is unpublished, but there is a good federal proxy for demand. QCEW reports monthly employment, and a boarding-heavy industry has to staff to the kennel, so the shape of the staffing year is the shape of the demand year. Here are national monthly employment levels for NAICS 812910:

Source: BLS QCEW quarterly files, private NAICS 812910, US totals, 2024 and 2025.

The pattern repeats almost exactly in both years. February is the trough, July is the peak, and the gap is 6.6% in 2025 and 6.5% in 2024. Employment then dips in September as the summer ends and climbs back through November and December.

Two honest caveats. First, this is the whole pet-care industry, not boarding alone, so it blends boarding's travel-driven year with grooming's steadier one. Second, and more useful: payroll employment understates short holiday peaks, because a facility that is full for the ten days around Christmas covers it with overtime and existing staff rather than new hires. The revenue peaks are sharper than this curve looks. What the curve does establish is the trough, and February is the month a boarding business has to be able to survive.

Holiday pricing is standard practice in the segment. In a Care.com survey, 58% of pet sitters charge a holiday surcharge, commonly $5 to $10 per visit, and boarding facilities add roughly 25% to 50% at peak (Care.com, 2025; see our pet care cost report for the detail).

What the data means if you run or open a boarding business

1. Your competition is not a chain, it is a neighbour. The top five providers hold 15% of the market and the biggest holds 3.5% (GM Insights, 2025), while 86% of businesses in the segment have no employees at all. You are not being out-marketed by a national brand, you are competing with a house down the road on trust, communication and proof of care.
2. Payroll is the business. About $223,800 of payroll per establishment across 7.1 employees (QCEW, 2025) says the margin lives in the rota, not the rate card. An hour of unnecessary overlap costs more than most price rises earn.
3. Plan for February, not July. A 6.6% staffing swing between the trough and the peak understates the revenue swing. Daycare and grooming attach revenue that is far less seasonal than boarding, which is exactly why the daycare share of the market is forecast to grow from 20.0% to 29.0% by 2035 (GM Insights).
4. Charge the holiday premium. With 58% of the market surcharging at holidays (Care.com), deposits, minimum stays and a published peak rate are normal, not aggressive.
5. Know your occupancy before you add runs. Nobody publishes an occupancy benchmark, so yours is the only number you can plan with. Capacity is cheap to add and expensive to fill.
6. The home-boarding end will keep taking the easy dogs. In-home boarding compounding at 8.5% a year means the facility case has to rest on what a house cannot do: staffed supervision, medication, structured play, cameras, insurance and records.

If you want to see how the whole category behaves state by state, including wages and growth in your market, that is our pet care industry statistics report. For the practical build-out, see how to start a boarding kennel, and for the software layer, dog boarding software and Pupline for dog boarding.

Pupline's own pricing, for the record: Facilities is $49.98 a month and includes three team members, with extra seats at $6 a month each, or $39 a month on the annual plan. It is the plan boarding and daycare businesses use, and it is consult-gated, so we talk to you before you sign up. Solo and mobile operators use Pro at $12.99 a month, or $10.40 a month billed annually, with every feature included. Both come with a 30-day trial and no card up front.

Methodology and sources

This report separates measured federal data from modelled private estimates and labels every figure with its source and data year. Figures are current as of September 2026.

Federal data. Establishment, employment, wage and monthly seasonality figures come from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, private ownership, national totals for NAICS 812910, drawn from the 2015, 2019, 2024 and 2025 annual and quarterly files. Establishment size classes and the 2023 payroll figure come from Census County Business Patterns 2023, the latest CBP release. Occupational wages come from BLS OEWS, May 2025. Growth rates and per-establishment figures marked "derived" are our arithmetic on those published series, and the arithmetic is shown wherever we use it. All federal figures cover NAICS 812910 as a whole, which bundles boarding with grooming, daycare, sitting, walking and training. There is no boarding-only federal code.

Private estimates. Segment sizing comes from IBISWorld's US Pet Grooming and Boarding report and GM Insights' Pet Boarding Services report, both read directly from the publishers' own public pages rather than from secondary coverage. These are modelled estimates and different firms disagree; we quote each one with its publisher and year attached and do not average them.

Consumer prices. Boarding rates come from Rover booking data, HomeGuide and Care.com, as compiled and cited in our pet care cost report. No government source publishes consumer pet-care prices.

What we left out. We found no primary source for US boarding occupancy rates, average revenue per boarding facility, or a count of boarding facilities as distinct from other pet-care establishments, so this report does not publish any of the three. Where a widely repeated figure could not be traced to the body that produced it, it was dropped rather than reworded.

Sources

• BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, annual and quarterly files, NAICS 812910, 2015 to 2025
• Census Bureau County Business Patterns, 2023, NAICS 812910 US file with employment size classes
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Animal Caretakers, SOC 39-2021, plus the 2024 to 2034 projection
• IBISWorld, Pet Grooming and Boarding in the US, 2026 figures
• GM Insights, Pet Boarding Services Market, 2025 figures with forecasts to 2035
• American Pet Products Association, 2025 spending and 2026 projection, and industry trends and stats
• Rover, HomeGuide and Care.com boarding rates and holiday surcharges, 2025 to 2026, as cited in our pet care cost report

Dog boarding data, answered

How big is the dog boarding industry in the US?

The US pet boarding services market is estimated at $5.28 billion in 2025 (GM Insights), inside a $11.3 billion US pet grooming and boarding industry in 2026 (IBISWorld). Both are private modelled estimates. No federal source sizes boarding on its own, because boarding shares one industry code with grooming, daycare, sitting and training.

How many dog boarding facilities are there in the US?

There is no published count of boarding facilities alone. Federal data counts 28,121 employer pet-care establishments in 2025 (BLS QCEW) across boarding, grooming, daycare, sitting, walking and training, of which 22.3% have 10 or more employees and 8.1% have 20 or more (Census CBP, 2023). Staffed overnight facilities sit in those larger bands.

Is the pet boarding market growing?

Yes, on every measure available. Employer pet-care establishments rose 40.4% and employment 44.7% between 2019 and 2025, with total wages up 97.6% (BLS QCEW). GM Insights forecasts the global boarding market to grow 6.6% a year from 2026 to 2035, with in-home boarding and daycare growing faster than traditional overnight kennels.

When is boarding busiest?

July is the peak and February the trough. National pet-care employment ran 6.6% higher in July than in February in 2025, with the same shape in 2024 (BLS QCEW). Employment understates the short holiday peaks, since facilities cover Christmas and Thanksgiving with existing staff rather than new hires, so the revenue swing is sharper than the staffing swing.

What is the average revenue of a boarding kennel?

No primary source publishes it. Average revenue across all businesses in the grooming and boarding segment works out at about $57,000 (IBISWorld, 2026, divided by its own business count), but that average is dominated by sole traders. For a facility, revenue is runs times rate times occupancy: at the $40 national standard rate, a 30-run kennel at 60% occupancy grosses about $263,000 a year.