How a solo host achieves 95% direct bookings by going all-in on dog-friendly
- Apr 11
- 8 min read
Sara Sokol runs a single property on the coast of Maine, US. She has no managing agent, no dynamic pricing tool, and a market with a brutally quiet off-season. She also has a 95% direct booking rate. Here's how she got there.
When Sara Sokol launched Little White Dog Properties in the summer of 2020, she did what most new hosts do: listed on the OTAs and set up a direct booking site alongside them. In her first year, she achieved something most hosts spend years chasing – 50% of bookings came direct. By year five, that figure had climbed to 95%.
The number sounds extraordinary. The explanation, once you hear it, is straightforward – though the execution requires genuine commitment. Sara didn't get to 95% direct bookings through clever funnel strategy or aggressive retargeting. She got there by picking a niche, owning it completely, and building a community around it.
Sara featured on the Host Planet Playbook, sponsored by property management software, Hospitable, to share how she built her business, what the dog-friendly positioning really involves, and what five years of solo hosting on a coastal Maine island has taught her. Catch the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple.
The property and the person behind it
Little White Dog Properties is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom cabin right on the water, on a small island in Georgetown, Midcoast Maine. Sara describes it as "close to heaven." She is not from Maine – she has lived there for 13 years, and the love she has for the state is a genuine driving force behind the business. "I'm so smitten that it tickles me that I get to share this place with other people," she says.
Sara's full-time career is as a positive reinforcement dog trainer – voted best in the state of Maine for nine consecutive years, and ranked 25th in the country. That background matters for understanding how her hosting business works. Dog training, she explains, is fundamentally about communicating with people, not dogs. It requires patience, high standards, and the ability to manage expectations consistently across a wide range of personalities. All of those things translate directly into hosting.
She started the vacation rental in summer 2020 as a complement to her main career – a way to scratch the itch of hospitality and share the state she loves. It has never been a replacement for that career, but five years in, she describes it as one of the best decisions she has made.
What "dog-friendly" actually means
Most holiday lets that describe themselves as pet-friendly are, in practice, pet-tolerant. They charge a pet fee, accept animals with reluctance, and spend the marketing copy reassuring guests that there are washable floors and a hose by the back door. That is not what Sara does.
From the outset, she decided that dogs would be welcomed as a first thought rather than an afterthought. That distinction shapes everything about the property. She provides washable dog beds to encourage dogs to sleep comfortably without necessarily taking over the sofas – though if a dog prefers the sofa, she has washable covers for that too. She stocks dog toys, a pet first aid kit, bowls, and crates for guests who need them. The yard has agility equipment. She accepts multiple dogs per booking, and when asked whether she had a cap, her answer was essentially: it depends on the space, not an arbitrary rule.
The operational logic is deliberate. Dog-welcoming setups make changeovers easier, not harder. Washable covers, designated dog furniture, and predictable setups mean her cleaning team can turn the property over efficiently – even on same-day summer changeovers. The result is a property that guests consistently describe in reviews as both the most dog-welcoming place they have ever stayed and immaculately clean. Those two things are not contradictory when you have thought through the systems.
How she got to 95% direct bookings
Sara's path from 50% to 95% direct bookings had two main drivers: social media and community building, particularly in Facebook groups.
She had an existing advantage. Her dog training business was already well established, with a loyal client base that knew and trusted her. When she launched the vacation rental, she was able to introduce it naturally to that network. Dog owners who trusted her with their dogs' training were naturally inclined to consider staying somewhere she had created for dogs. Word spread through that community organically, and her first year's 50% direct rate reflects how much of a head start that gave her.
After year one, she looked for ways to extend that reach. She noticed that in the United Kingdom there were multiple active Facebook communities connecting dog owners with pet-friendly accommodation. In the United States, there was nothing comparable. She created a group called Dogs Welcome and shared it through the Canine Enrichment Facebook group – a community of around 500,000 members run by a contact of hers. Within 24 hours of that single post, Dogs Welcome had gained 1,000 members. It has grown steadily in the four years since, and it now serves as one of her primary channels for reaching new guests and connecting dog-friendly property owners with the people looking for them.
The group works because it solves a real problem. People who travel with dogs – especially multiple dogs – struggle to find places that genuinely welcome them. They are not just looking for a property that will accept their pet with a fee and a set of restrictions. They are looking for a host who understands dogs, has thought about their dogs' comfort, and will not make them feel like an inconvenience. That guest exists in large numbers, and they are remarkably loyal once they find somewhere that treats them well.
Several of Sara's guests have told her the same thing: they had not travelled in years because finding somewhere that would take their dogs was too difficult or too stressful. Little White Dog Properties solved that problem for them. Those guests return. They tell their friends. They bring their friends with dogs.
Managing a seasonal market
The Maine coast is a genuinely seasonal market. Summer – June through August – is the peak, and the off-season is, in Sara's words, "really dead." It gets cold, it gets wet, and most properties in the area close.
The dog-friendly niche provides meaningful insulation against that. Sara's calendar runs full into October. She picks up Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's bookings. Even in the depths of winter, she gets occasional weekend stays from guests driving up from Massachusetts – partly because she is one of very few properties open at all.
She is clear-eyed about the limitations. The winter calendar will never look like July. But she plans for it, treats the seasonality as a known variable rather than a surprise, and uses the quieter period for maintenance and preparation. The niche helps in a specific way during the off-season: dog owners want to travel year-round, and a coastal Maine cabin in autumn or winter is appealing to a dog owner in a way it might not be to a family with school-age children.
The philosophy behind the guest experience
Asked for her top three principles for delivering an outstanding guest experience, Sara offered three things that sound simple but are harder to practise consistently.
The first is not to assume the worst of guests. She has observed that some hosts approach every guest communication with a degree of suspicion – one ambiguous message and they are already imagining the worst. That attitude, she argues, bleeds into every subsequent interaction and creates a self-fulfilling dynamic. Starting from the assumption that guests are good people who want to enjoy themselves produces better outcomes.
The second is generosity. Be generous with your time, your communication, your knowledge of the area, your welcome supplies. Give people more than they expect in the small things – the toilet paper, the local recommendations, the response to a question. Generosity is not expensive, and it is the thing guests remember.
The third is not to take things personally. Guests are different kinds of communicators. Some are terse, some are effusive, some are demanding in ways that have nothing to do with the host. Treating the business as a business – not as a reflection of yourself – creates the mental distance needed to handle difficult situations calmly and resolve them well.
That mindset served her during what she describes as her worst operational moment: a Christmas stay during which a winter storm knocked out power to the entire area for four days. Running on a generator and unable to get a propane delivery in time, she eventually had to move her guests to a hotel on Christmas Day. She resolved it. Her guests were taken care of. The situation was not one she caused, but she took responsibility for fixing it.
Sara controls pricing and marketing
Sara does not use a dynamic pricing tool, which she acknowledges is unusual. Her view is practical: Little White Dog Properties tends to book far enough in advance that dynamic pricing would add complexity without materially changing her results. That may change if she adds more properties, but for now it is not a gap in her operation.
For marketing, she rates Canva highly and uses it extensively to create the social media content that feeds her community building.
Frequently asked questions about dog-friendly vacation rental hosting
Is dog-friendly hosting more profitable than standard hosting?
It depends on the market and the approach. Sara Sokol's experience suggests that committing fully to a dog-friendly positioning – rather than simply accepting pets as an add-on – can deliver meaningful advantages: higher repeat bookings, stronger word-of-mouth, and better resilience in seasonal markets. The trade-off is that it requires genuine investment in the property setup and a willingness to drop practices like high pet fees that might otherwise generate short-term revenue.
How do you keep a dog-friendly property clean enough for five-star reviews?
The key is designing for dogs rather than just allowing them. Washable dog beds give dogs a comfortable alternative to furniture. Washable sofa covers protect upholstery if dogs do get on sofas. Crates, designated areas, and clear changeover systems mean cleaning teams know exactly what to check and replace. Sara Sokol's guests regularly comment in reviews that they cannot believe how clean the property is given how many dogs it hosts.
Can you get direct bookings as a solo host with just one property?
Yes, though it takes time and deliberate effort. Sara Sokol built from 50% direct in year one to 95% by year five, primarily through social media and community building in Facebook groups focused on dog-friendly travel. Having an existing network – in her case, dog training clients – accelerated the initial growth, but the Facebook group she created has since become the larger driver and is open to any host willing to invest in it.
How do you handle the off-season as a coastal holiday let owner?
Seasonality is a real feature of coastal markets, not a problem to be solved. The most practical approaches are planning financially for lower revenue in winter months, staying open when competitors close (which can capture the guests who do want to travel), and choosing a niche that has demand year-round. Dog owners travel in all seasons; families with school-age children largely do not.
Do you need a dynamic pricing tool for a holiday let?
Not necessarily. Dynamic pricing tools are most valuable when you have enough booking lead time and occupancy data to benefit from rate optimisation. Sara Sokol, with a single property that books well in advance, finds the complexity outweighs the benefit. For hosts with multiple properties or more variable demand, dynamic pricing tools are generally worth the investment.
What is the most important quality for a solo holiday let host?
Sara Sokol's answer would be resilience – the ability to approach problems without panic and resolve them without drama. Things will break. Guests will sometimes be difficult. Local infrastructure will occasionally fail at the worst possible time. The hosts who sustain a high standard of guest experience across five, 10, or 15 years are those who treat problems as situations to be resolved, not personal attacks to be defended against.
How do you increase direct bookings for a holiday let?
The most effective routes are building an owned audience (email list, social media following, community groups), incentivising guests to book direct in subsequent stays, and developing a clear brand identity that gives guests a reason to seek you out rather than book through an OTA. Sara Sokol's Facebook group, Dogs Welcome, demonstrates that community building in a specific niche can grow faster than traditional marketing channels and generate more loyal guests than OTA traffic.
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