The Seven Sins of Pet-Friendly · Sin 01 · For hotels
The Undefined Claim
You are advertising a promise you never defined, so the guest defines it, and their version includes the bar, the terrace and dinner at the table together. Deliver a bedroom and a rule sheet instead, and the gap becomes a review title.
The guest writes your definition
A word you never defined does not stay undefined. Your guest fills the blank with the most generous reading, because that is what the phrase invites, and arrives expecting it. When your operation delivers something narrower, the difference is not neutral. It is a broken promise, and it is yours, because you made it.
That gap has a name on every review platform: "not actually pet friendly". Guests writing it are not reviewing your amenities. They are reviewing the distance between your label and your delivery.
Regulators see the void
The absence of a definition is now on the record. Asked to define a pet-friendly venue, a government stated there is no specific or consistent definition of the category. That is not a footnote. It means every use of the phrase is a claim with nothing behind it, and a claim with nothing behind it is precisely what deceptive-practice rules exist for.
A claim you cannot evidence
Since May 2025 the FTC treats misrepresenting the nature of a claim as an unfair or deceptive practice. Read your own listing against your own operation. If the word promises more than the room delivers, the exposure exists whether or not you meant it to, and it does not depend on how prominently you disclosed anything.
The vague word is expensive
The undefined claim feels free. It is not. It manufactures the exact guest who arrives expecting one thing, meets another, complains at your desk and reviews you on the way out. Every one of those is a cost you booked by using a word you had not defined.
Publish a policy or drop the word
There are two honest options and the current default is neither. Publish a real policy, where dogs may go, what is provided, what the limits are, and hold yourself to it. Or decide you do not want dogs and say so cleanly. What is not defensible is a welcome you never defined and cannot deliver.
Straight answers
See what guests write when they think nobody is listening. Every quote sourced. Read the complaints →
The other side of this page. Your guests are reading their own version of this. Read the guest version →
Sources
- Hong Kong SAR Government, official reply on pet-friendly premises, April 2025. info.gov.hk.
- Federal Trade Commission, Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, effective 12 May 2025. FTC guidance.