Pet Hotel & Boarding Terms

Welcome to Swipaw boarding 🐾 Your cat or dog deserves care like family while you are away, and everyone should know who answers for what. Here are the rules for owners and hotels alike.

In short: The hotel keeps your pet safe, returns it when you ask and answers for its own negligence. You bring a vaccinated pet with its card, disclose its health and behaviour, and name an emergency contact and a vet-spending cap. Expect check-in photos, daily updates, no sedation and incident reports within 2 hours. Your payment waits with our payment partner until after check-out (protektado ang bayad mo); an unclaimed pet is never sold, rehomed or put down. The numbered clauses govern.

1. About these terms#

1. These Pet Hotel & Boarding Terms (the "Boarding Terms") govern every boarding stay (a "Stay") booked on Swipaw between the member who books it (the "Owner" or "you") and the pet hotel, boarding facility or home boarder (boarding Pets in its own home) listing it, with its staff (the "Hotel"), for each cat or dog boarded (the "Pet"). Swipaw is operated by Parada Technologies Inc. ("we").
2. They form part of the Terms of Service and prevail on boarding matters; the Payments & Refunds Policy, Privacy Notice and, for Hotels, the Provider Agreement also apply.
3. Hotels accept these terms before their first hotel listing, Owners before their first hotel request and again when paying; we record each acceptance (Electronic Commerce Act of 2000, RA 8792), and a paid Stay keeps the version accepted. The Stay is a contract between Owner and Hotel; Swipaw is not a party and does not insure it.
4. Price and Payment Protection. Swipaw computes the price (nightly rate × nights × rooms, or the offer the Hotel accepted), taxes included; only late pick-up nights (section 8) and veterinary costs that are yours (section 6) can be added later, through Swipaw. Under Payment Protection, our payment partner Xendit Philippines, Inc. collects your payment into an account it keeps for the Hotel and holds it until release (clause 4.3), when our commission is split off; Swipaw never holds your money.

2. What kind of contract a Stay is#

1. Under the Civil Code of the Philippines (RA 386), a paid Stay is a deposit of your Pet (Articles 1962 and 1965): the Hotel must keep it safely, with the diligence of a good father of a family (Article 1173) or any higher standard its listing promises, and return it on request (Articles 1972 and 1988); it answers for its staff (Article 1973).
2. Without your written consent in the chat, the Hotel may not pass the Pet to another facility or person, except a veterinarian in an emergency (Articles 1973 and 1974), or use it beyond its care (Article 1977).
3. The Hotel is not liable for a fortuitous event, such as a typhoon, earthquake or flood that reasonable precautions could not prevent, unless its negligence contributed or it used the Pet without permission, delayed its return or let others use it (Articles 1174 and 1979).
4. No sign, waiver or listing text can reduce the Hotel's duty of care or its liability for negligence (Consumer Act of the Philippines, RA 7394, Article 106; Civil Code, Article 2003, by analogy).

3. Before check-in: your part#

1. Vaccinations. Every Pet needs an anti-rabies vaccine and a core combination vaccine (5-in-1, 6-in-1 or 8-in-1 for dogs; 3-in-1 or 4-in-1 for cats), each given within the 12 months before check-in and recorded on its profile. The Anti-Rabies Act of 2007 (RA 9482) requires rabies vaccination of dogs; Swipaw requires it for cats too. A listing may also require kennel cough (Bordetella) vaccination. Bring the vaccination card to check-in.
2. Health Declaration. In your request and the booking chat, tell the Hotel in writing about any illness, parasites, medicines, allergies, heat, pregnancy or recent surgery, and any aggression, bite history, escape habits or fears (your "Health Declaration"), and give written feeding and medicine instructions; omissions are at your risk (section 7).
3. Emergency Contact and Emergency Cap. Your request names an adult who can decide for the Pet if you cannot be reached (your "Emergency Contact"), whose details the Hotel sees once the Stay is confirmed, and the emergency veterinary spending you pre-authorise per Stay (the "Emergency Cap": ₱5,000 unless you set another amount). In the chat, give the Hotel your mobile number and usual clinic.

4. Check-in, daily care and check-out#

1. Times and transport. Check-in and check-out are at the booked times unless the Hotel agrees otherwise. With pick-up and drop-off, the Hotel's custody runs from collection to hand-back, and the Pet travels in a carrier, crate or harness, never in a trunk or open cargo bed, as the Animal Welfare Act (RA 8485, as amended by RA 10631) requires.
2. Condition Reports and updates. At check-in and check-out the Hotel checks the Pet with you, noting its condition and belongings, and posts at least two photos in the chat within an hour of check-in and more when it marks the Stay complete (the "Condition Reports"); in between, it sends a photo or message every day.
3. Release. The Hotel hands the Pet only to you or someone you named in the chat, after checking ID. You may collect early; unused nights are refunded only if the Hotel agrees or a dispute so decides. Unless you confirm or dispute first, the Stay confirms automatically 48 hours after the Hotel marks it complete (or as your booking shows), releasing the payment.
4. Refusal and early end. The Hotel may refuse a Pet that arrives without its vaccination card or a required vaccine, visibly sick, injured or infested, in heat where the listing excludes it, or not as booked or declared. A Pet turning dangerous or contagiously ill mid-Stay is isolated and seen by a veterinarian, and you may be asked to collect it within 24 hours; care continues until you do. Once the Pet is back with you, the Hotel cancels with the welfare reason: unstayed nights are refunded, it does not count against the Hotel, and Swipaw reviews it.

5. Care standards, limits and permits#

1. Daily care. Following the Animal Welfare Act's rules and the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) kennel rules (BAI Administrative Order No. 14, s. 2004), the Hotel provides room to stand, turn, lie down and stretch; ventilated, weatherproof shelter; daily cleaning; clean water always, or at least twice daily for an hour; daily food as instructed; daily exercise, never forced; no permanent tethering; females in heat kept from males; isolation of possibly contagious animals; and group play only with your consent.
2. Medicines. The Hotel gives only medicines your veterinarian prescribed, exactly as labelled, logs each dose, shares the log on request and gives nothing else, including "calming" products.
3. Never allowed. Under the Philippine Veterinary Medicine Act of 2004 (RA 9268), only a licensed veterinarian may diagnose, treat, prescribe, vaccinate, sedate or operate, so the Hotel never sedates or vaccinates a Pet or performs any medical or surgical procedure; it gives first aid and gets the Pet to a veterinarian. It never breeds, docks, crops, declaws or hits a Pet or uses shock or prong collars, never leaves Pets without a responsible adult on site and keeps enclosures escape-proof.
4. Permits and home boarding. Boarding animals for a fee makes the Hotel an animal facility, like a kennel (Animal Welfare Act; Department of Agriculture Administrative Circular No. 04, s. 2015), needing a BAI Certificate of Registration and a Mayor's or business permit. Before a hotel listing goes live, Swipaw's business verification checks the permit and BAI status, and the Hotel attests to the BAI care checklist; the "BAI-registered" badge shows only once we verify the certificate. A home boarder says so in its listing, meets the same standards and needs the certificate unless the BAI confirmed in writing that it does not.

6. Emergencies and incidents#

1. Illness or injury. The Hotel calls you at once, then your Emergency Contact, and follows the decision. If the Pet's life is at risk, or no one answers within an hour, it takes the Pet to your clinic or the nearest open one and may approve care up to the Emergency Cap; more needs your or your Emergency Contact's approval unless a veterinarian states it is needed at once to save the Pet's life or end severe suffering.
2. Vet costs. You pay for conditions the Hotel did not cause, the Hotel for those its negligence or breach caused, with clinic receipts in the chat; anything owed to the Hotel is paid through Swipaw.
3. Reporting. Within 2 hours of any injury, illness needing a veterinarian, fight, escape or death, the Hotel calls you and files the booking's incident report, which alerts you and Swipaw.
4. Bites and escapes. If a Pet bites someone, the Hotel helps the person, reports the bite to the barangay or city veterinary office within 24 hours and keeps the Pet under veterinary observation for 14 days, never putting it down, as the Anti-Rabies Act requires for dogs (for cats, as the city veterinarian directs); you continue after check-out. The Hotel searches at once for an escaped Pet and reports it within 24 hours to the barangay and city veterinary office or pound.
5. Death. The Hotel tells you at once, gets a veterinarian's statement of the likely cause and never disposes of the body without your written consent; a necropsy you request is at your cost, repaid if the Hotel was negligent. Only a licensed veterinarian may euthanise a Pet, with your or your Emergency Contact's consent or as the Animal Welfare Act allows.

7. Liability: who answers for what#

1. The Hotel is liable for loss, injury, illness, escape or death caused by its or its staff's negligence or breach. If a Pet is lost, escapes or dies in its sole custody, the Hotel is presumed at fault unless it proves otherwise, except in a natural calamity (Civil Code, Article 1265). Nothing limits liability for fraud (Article 1171), bad faith or gross negligence.
2. Unless its negligence contributed, the Hotel is not liable for conditions present before check-in, illness incubating then or caught despite the vaccination rules and care standards, stress despite reasonable care, or undisclosed behaviour.
3. Damage the Pet causes. As the Pet's possessor, the Hotel answers to others for damage it causes, unless the victim was at fault or force majeure caused it (Civil Code, Article 2183). Between you and the Hotel, you bear harm from a dangerous trait you knew or should have known of and did not disclose, unless the Hotel knew (Article 1993); the Hotel bears harm from its failure to supervise, secure or separate animals.

8. Late pick-up and unclaimed Pets: walang iwanan#

1. Overstay. Collecting your Pet more than 2 hours after the booked check-out adds one Overstay night, plus one per further 24 hours or part, each at 100% of your Stay's average nightly price. The listing shows this rate, the booking shows what has accrued, and you pay through Swipaw.
2. Care never stops. As the Animal Welfare Act's rules require of any temporary custodian, the Hotel keeps caring for an unclaimed Pet, releases it only to you or your named person (or under clause 8.3), and never sells, rehomes or euthanises it. It waives any right to keep the Pet until paid (Civil Code, Article 1994); what you owe stays a debt payable through Swipaw.
3. If you do not return. Counting from the booked check-out: on day 0 the Hotel reports the missed pick-up in the booking and contacts you, and Swipaw notifies you; on day 1 Swipaw's support team opens a case and calls you; on day 3 Swipaw's formal notice, also by e-mail, names the deadline; on day 7 support calls your Emergency Contact. If by day 15 the Pet is uncollected and neither you nor your Emergency Contact has answered (or you missed the pick-up you agreed), Swipaw sends final notices and, after confirming these steps to the Hotel in writing, the Hotel may treat the Pet as abandoned: it reports this to the barangay or city veterinary office and hands the Pet to that office or its pound, or to a BAI-registered shelter that accepts it, never to a buyer or private person, and sends Swipaw a handover record with photos.
4. You remain liable for all Overstay, veterinary and handover costs, and abandoning an animal is an offence under section 7 of the Animal Welfare Act.

9. Cancellations and disputes#

1. The cancellation policy shown before you pay, with its exact cut-off times, is saved with your booking. Unless the listing showed its own, the pet hotel row of this table (Swipaw's current pet hotel setting) applies, counted back from the booked check-in, Philippine time.

2. These windows cover a change of mind and fairly estimate the Hotel's loss from holding your room. They never limit your Consumer Act remedies of re-performance, a refund or a price reduction for a defective or undelivered Stay (Articles 99 and 102); open a dispute instead.
3. A Hotel cancellation, other than under clause 4.4, gives you a full refund and counts against the Hotel. If a Swipaw declaration covers a typhoon, flood, earthquake or government order stopping a Stay before check-in, cancelling gives a full refund and counts against no one; Stays under way continue until the Pet is safely collected. A no-show by the end of the check-in day is settled as a late cancellation.
4. Disputes. Open a dispute from the booking before the payment is released; Hotels may too. Payment stays frozen while Swipaw's team reviews the evidence, including the Condition Reports, then refunds, releases or splits it.
5. We decide complaints within 7 calendar days (Internet Transactions Act of 2023, RA 11967). Our decision settles only the payment; your other remedies, including a complaint to the Department of Trade and Industry, remain (Complaints).

10. Photos, personal data and contact#

1. Photos and cameras. The Hotel uses Stay photos publicly only with your written consent and never shows people without theirs. CCTV and live cameras must be stated in the listing; feeds are only for owners of Pets then boarding, and recordings only for safety and disputes.
2. Personal data. Each of you uses the other's details (names, numbers, Emergency Contact, Health Declaration and the exact address shown once you pay) only for the Stay, keeps them secure, never markets to the other, deletes them once the Stay and any dispute end and reports any loss or misuse to Swipaw within 24 hours, as the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173) expects.
3. Chat and contact. Keep Stay messages in the booking chat, which turns read-only 7 days after the Stay is completed or cancelled. Questions and complaints: [email protected].