Nobody Calls It a Kennel Anymore

The industry has spent twenty years rebranding. The kennel became the pet resort, then the dog hotel, then the lodge, the inn, the retreat, the suites. Yet 25.53% of American boarding businesses — 5,911 of them — still have the word kennel in their name, more than say “resort” (9.33%) and more than say “boarding” (14.37%). It remains the single most common word a boarding business uses for itself.

What has changed is where. The word did not disappear; it retreated to the Plains and the Upper Midwest and left the Sun Belt to the resorts.

In South Dakota, 52.3% of boarding businesses call themselves a kennel. In Nevada it is 10.4%. The gradient runs from the northern Plains and the Midwest, where the word is plain description, to the Sun Belt, where it reads as something you would not want to leave your dog in. The states below are those with at least 50 boarding listings (1 smaller ones are held back as insufficient data).

In 8 states the hospitality words have overtaken kennel outright: Florida (24.3% to 12.1%), Texas (24% to 16.9%), Arizona (23.5% to 11.6%), Oklahoma (23.5% to 18.4%), New Mexico (20.9% to 17.2%), Nevada (20.8% to 10.4%), Rhode Island (20% to 17.5%) and California (18% to 16.4%).

Our luxury kennel piece found that a premium word — luxury, resort, suites — buys nothing: facilities that make the claim charge what everyone else charges. The plain word turns out to be different. Among boarding facilities that publish a nightly rate, those with kennel in the name advertise a median of $35, against $45 for the resorts, hotels and lodges and $49 for facilities that use neither. That is $10 a night, or about 22%, less than the hospitality set.

The likeliest explanation is not that the word itself is cheap, but that it travels with a kind of business: older, more rural, more often an outdoor-run operation in a state where boarding is cheap anyway. Our boarding price index puts the Plains and the Midwest at the bottom of the national price table, which is also where the kennel belt is. A resort in Nebraska is still cheaper than a kennel in New Jersey. But within the market you are actually shopping in, the word is a fair first signal: the place that still calls itself a kennel is probably the one that will quote you less.

If price is the constraint, search for kennels, not resorts — literally. If you are choosing between two places at similar prices, the name tells you nothing about the care and everything about the marketing budget. Either way, the boarding directory lists them all, kennels and resorts alike, with the advertised rate where we have one.

Names, not signage.We read the business name as our sources record it. A facility that dropped “kennel” from its sign but not from its legal name reads here as a kennel.

Kennel wins ties.A name that carries both words (“Paws Resort & Kennel”) is counted as a kennel in the price comparison, on the view that an operator who still uses the word means it. It is counted under both words in the share table above.

Advertised, not transacted.The rates are the lowest published nightly price on each facility’s own site — the entry price, not what a large dog in peak season pays. Only facilities that publish a price are in the comparison (1,047 of 23,150), which skews toward operations with a real website.