Methodology
How we score pet-friendliness
The full method behind every hotel page on the site - how the paw rating is built, what evidence we accept, and what we deliberately ignore.
Pet-friendly hotel listings are abundant on the internet. Few of them are useful. Most copy a hotel's own marketing copy verbatim, accept any property's self-claim as evidence, and present a star rating as if it told you anything about the experience of bringing a dog. This page sets out how we do it differently.
Every figure on a Four Legged Guests hotel page is derived from a documented process. If you find something you can't reconcile against this methodology, that's a bug - please tell us.
3
Verification gates per hotel
0
Self-claims accepted as evidence
90 d
Days max between data refreshes
The paw rating, explained
A 0–5 score that reflects only the experience of guests who travelled with a pet.
The paw rating is independent of the hotel's overall star rating and independent of the hotel's headline Agoda guest score. A 5-star city hotel can carry a 3-paw rating if pet-owning guests reported a frosty welcome; a quirky village B&B can carry 5 paws if the dogs there have a great time.
The number alongside the rating (e.g. 4.5 / 5 · 12 pet reviews) is the count of reviews that contributed to it - that's the only sample size on the page, and the only signal of how much weight you should put on it. A 5-paw rating from one review is a hint; a 4.6-paw rating from forty is a pattern.
The three verification gates
Every hotel that earns a paw rating clears three checks. No exceptions, no overrides.
How a hotel earns a paw rating
Every published paw rating is the output of these three gates in sequence. A property that fails any of them does not appear on the site.
Marked pet-friendly at source
Agoda's own pet-friendly filter must include the property. We re-check this against the live Agoda inventory at least quarterly so properties that drop the pet welcome disappear from our site.
Real guest reviews mentioning a pet
We scrape recent guest reviews and pre-filter them with a regex covering dogs, pets, puppies, and adjacent vocabulary. Properties with no pet-mention review history simply do not appear on the site at all - we'd rather show nothing than guess.
LLM-verified relevance
Every pre-filtered review is then passed through an LLM judge that confirms whether the reviewer is genuinely describing a pet-related experience (versus a passing mention) and isolates what they actually said about the welcome, fees, restrictions, and walking access. The paw rating is the mean star rating of the verified reviews, rounded to one decimal.
What's on each hotel page
Every page is built from three independent data sources.
Facts about the property
Address, room count, accommodation type, photos. Sourced from the Agoda affiliate inventory; refreshed whenever Agoda updates the master record.
The paw rating and its evidence
Described above. The summary text and paw themes (e.g. "warm welcome for dogs") are paraphrased motifs grounded in the verified reviews - we never publish verbatim review text, name reviewers, or quote them.
The booking link
A fresh affiliate URL minted at publish time so the price and availability you see at Agoda when you click through are current. We earn a commission when you book; you pay the same price either way. Full details on our affiliate disclosure page.
What we use, and what we refuse
Two columns - what we'll do to score a hotel, and what we won't, no matter how convenient it would be.
What we use as evidence
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Pet-mention review patterns
Multiple recent guests describing the same welcome quality, fee structure, or restriction. Patterns of three or more reviews are the floor for any claim we make in the summary.
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Operator-published policy text
The hotel's own listing of pet fees, breed restrictions, and room policies - at the moment we publish. We treat this as the most current source of truth at book time and link directly to it.
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Aggregated star scores
The mean of verified pet-mention review scores, rounded to one decimal. Sample size shown alongside so you can judge how much weight to give it.
What we refuse as evidence
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The hotel's marketing copy
Phrases like "dog lovers welcome" on the hotel's own website don't influence the rating. The evidence is in real guest reviews after the fact.
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Paid placement of any kind
No hotel can buy a rank or appear on the site by paying. No "promoted listings" or sponsored coverage. We decline these requests in writing.
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Fabricated guest experiences
We never invent reviews, never quote a guest we didn't scrape, never write first-person prose pretending we stayed there. We summarise patterns; we don't impersonate guests.
How often the data refreshes
Travel inventory ages quickly. Three different cycles keep the data current.
Affiliate URL & price
Minted at publish time. When you click through to Agoda, you see current availability.
Pet-mention reviews
Re-scraped on a rolling basis. Hotels with thin review history are re-checked more often than ones with established review patterns.
Hotel facts (address, photos, room count)
Refreshed when the Agoda affiliate inventory updates, typically quarterly. If a hotel's policy changes in a way our latest scrape hasn't caught - for example a new pet supplement, or a breed restriction - the booking flow at Agoda is always the source of truth at the moment you book.
Limitations we want you to know about
Things our method gets wrong, or hasn't solved yet.
Coverage skew
We can only score hotels that have pet-mention reviews on Agoda. Properties popular with pet owners surface first; rural and newly-opened properties may be under-represented even when they're excellent.
Recency bias
A hotel can earn a strong paw rating early and coast on it. We re-check, but the headline number can lag a refresh cycle if standards slip.
UK-only at present
The entire inventory is UK properties. We have no immediate plans to expand abroad - covering the UK well is the priority.
Two-tier review sourcing
Every hotel page reflects Agoda guest reviews mentioning pets. Selected hotels are additionally cross-referenced with [Booking.com](https://www.booking.com/), Tripadvisor, Google and the hotel's own site through our deep-research pass - those hotels carry a wider evidence base. We're widening this second tier over time.
Spotted a paw rating that doesn't add up?
If a rating doesn't reconcile against your own experience at a property - too high, too low, or just out of date - we want to know. We'll re-check it against the source reviews and update the page if the data supports a change.