five steps, one of which nobody else bothers to do
What booking a dog friendly vacation through an agent actually involves
Most of the work here is correspondence. Booking a dog friendly vacation through an agent means somebody else writes the awkward emails and waits for the answers in writing.
Trips run $1,180 to $3,120 per person. You are billed none of it by this office.
Nothing here counts you and nothing follows you off the page. One word can be stored, and only the word yes, so this slip stops coming back. The whole of what that means.
A listing that says "pets welcome" is a checkbox somebody clicked once, possibly in a different year, possibly under a different owner. It is not a promise and it does not know your dog. Booking a dog friendly vacation through an agent replaces that checkbox with a named person at the property answering a specific question in writing, and that difference is the entire reason this office exists.
Eleven trips are on the books, all of them reachable by road inside the United States. Each one is filed by how much of the week your dog is actually part of: all of it, almost all of it, or part of it. Nothing here involves a plane, a border, or a form.
- You write, we readTell us where you want to go, roughly when, how many people, and one honest paragraph about your dog. Size, temperament around strangers, whether he can be left alone in a strange room for an hour. We read messages the same working day.
- We put two or three trips in front of youNot a catalog dump. Two or three that fit what you told us, with the access level named for each and the parts of the week that are closed to dogs listed before you get attached to anything.
- We write to the property and get it in writingThis is the step that takes two to four working days and the step nobody else performs. We contact the property directly, describe your dog by size and by number, and ask the specific questions: which rooms, which ground, left alone or not, extra charge or none, and does the answer change in the season you are going. We do not accept a shrug. What comes back is an email with a name on it, and we forward it to you before you commit to anything.
- You decide with the answer in handYou read the property's own words, not our summary of them. If the answer is thin or evasive, we say so and offer the next option instead. Nobody is pushed.
- You book directly with the propertyWe hand you the reservation route and the terms, and you pay the property. Your card details go to them and only to them. No card ever reaches this office, at any stage, for any reason.
Four things this office cannot do for you
- Change a property's mind
- If a place says no dogs in the dining room, that is their rule and we have no leverage over it. What we can do is find out before you arrive rather than after.
- Hold a price for you
- A figure we quote is what the property told us on the day we asked. Rates move. We will not pretend otherwise, and we will not tell you a number is locked when it is not.
- Beat a figure you found elsewhere
- We do not undercut and we do not matching a figure. Our value is the written answer in step three, not a smaller number.
- Arrange care for your dog
- Boarding, day care, sitters, boarding place-style arrangements: none of it. That is yours to organize, and anything touching your dog's health belongs with your own veterinarian. We do not advise on it and would not know how.
What this costs you, and who pays us instead
Not a cent. Nobody is billed for a conversation, for the reading, for placing a booking, or for the letters in step three even when it runs long and even when the answer that comes back is a no and you walk away.
The way this works is ordinary in the industry and worth stating plainly so you are not wondering. When you travel and the stay is completed, the property pays this office a commission out of what you already paid them. It does not sit on top of your rate. You are not paying a surcharge for using us instead of booking yourself, and if you rang the property directly you would pay the same figure.
Two things follow from that, and both are in your favor. First, we are paid after you travel, not before, so an unhappy week is not something we get paid for regardless. Second, since we take nothing from you, there is nothing to refund and no payment dispute to have with us. Cancellation is entirely between you and the property, under their terms, which we put in front of you before you commit. Those terms are set out at cancellation terms.
We also do not operate any of these places. We do not own the cabins, run the trails, or employ anybody at the properties. We are an independent office that arranges stays with them on your behalf. When something goes wrong on the ground, the property is the one who fixes it, and we will happily get on email with them alongside you.
One more thing about that third step, because people ask. Sometimes the written answer is worse than the listing suggested. A property will admit that the yard is not fenced after all, or that dogs are fine in the room but not on the deck where you were planning to eat. That is a useful outcome, not a failed one. Finding it out in an email in MN is a great deal cheaper than finding it out after a six hour drive.