Guide · Peak season

The holiday rush playbook.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, the Fourth — a handful of weeks make or break a boarding year. The facilities that come out ahead don't work harder those weeks; they decide everything before the phone starts ringing. Here's the playbook, in booking order.

Read the playbook

The BarkWhiz Playbooks screen with a facility's own Holiday Boarding Prep playbook — vaccine checks and readiness steps before holiday stays

Weeks out

Fill the board deliberately — and protect it

Open holiday booking early — to regulars first

Your best clients shouldn't lose Christmas week to a stranger who called first. An early-access window for regulars (a genuine membership perk) fills the board with dogs you know — and earns loyalty you can't buy with discounts.

Post your peak terms and hold them

Holiday rate or minimum stay, deposit required, cancellation window — posted on the booking page, applied to everyone. Peak weeks are scarce inventory; price them honestly and never negotiate at the counter.

Deposits are non-negotiable in peak

Every holiday no-show is a run you refused someone else for. A meaningful deposit collected at booking — automatically, online — is the single strongest protection. (The full case: reducing no-shows.)

Run a real waitlist from day one

You'll sell out — that's the plan. Every "no room" should become a waitlist entry, because peak weeks always shed a few cancellations, and the list is how those runs refill in minutes instead of sitting empty at your highest rate of the year.

Chase vaccines before the crunch

Nothing wrecks a holiday drop-off line like discovering an expired rabies at the counter. Flag expiring vaccines a few weeks ahead and let clients upload the new record from their portal — not hand you paper at 7 a.m. on the 23rd.

Sell the add-ons at booking

Exit baths, extra play, photo updates — holiday guests stay longer, and their owners (feeling the guilt of leaving) say yes at booking time at the highest rate of the year. Put the extras in the booking flow, not on a clipboard.

The week of

Run the crunch like a checklist, not a scramble

Write the prep down and run it the same way every time. Confirm vaccines, verify pickup contacts, check feeding and meds notes, assign runs — the same sequence for every holiday guest. This is literally what a playbook is for: build "Holiday Boarding Prep" once, launch it on every holiday booking, and the steps become assigned tasks with owners and due dates instead of tribal knowledge.
Sort the board before the wave hits. A full house of arrivals in one morning is a run-assignment puzzle. Solve it in advance — sizes, weight limits, tier rules — not dog-by-dog while the lobby backs up. (This is the Kennel Whizard's whole job.)
Stagger drop-off and pickup windows. Assigned arrival windows flatten the 7 a.m. wall into a manageable stream — and clients follow them happily when the confirmation states them plainly.
Staff the windows, not the day. Peak load isn't all day; it's drop-off and pickup windows. Put your extra hands exactly there, keep your calmest desk person on the counter, and let the floor breathe midday.
Keep the updates flowing when you're slammed. The week you're busiest is the week owners — away from their dogs at the holidays — most need to hear everything's fine. Updates drafted from the day's logged activity (and reviewed by your team) go out even on the 24th; that's the week that earns the January review.

After

The rush isn't over when the dogs go home

The week after a holiday is the highest-intent rebooking window of the year: every guest's owner just proved they travel. A rebooking nudge for the next holiday, a review request while the goodwill is fresh, and a look at your occupancy and no-show numbers while they're recent — that's how one good week compounds into a good year. Then write down what broke, and fix the playbook before the next one.

Run your next holiday on rails

Deposits at booking, self-serve waitlists, vaccine uploads, a Holiday Boarding Prep playbook your team runs the same way every time, and the Kennel Whizard sorting the board — BarkWhiz was built by an operator who's worked the 23rd of December.

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