For families across the world, looking at booking a holiday or staycation can often be interrupted by the consideration of your pets. Should you be left with having to take your pet with you, Where in the world offers the best pet staycations?
We have looked at a variety of factors that might impact your decision when choosing a holiday destination with your furry friend to find the perfect city for pet vacations.
Which cities offer the best experience for a pet vacation?
We have analysed data associated with both pets and holidays to showcase which cities offer the best experience for a pet staycation. These metrics include the likes of the number of parks, percentage of pet-friendly hotels and percentage of pet-friendly restaurants. Take a look at our findings in the graphics below to see which cities rank top.
When looking at where the best city for a pet vacation is, Paris, the city of love and Milan, the fashion capital both take the top spot as the most pet-friendly city with an impressive score of 94 out of 100. To break down the figures, Paris boasts 288 nature and parks, nearly 600 pet-friendly hotels and more than 300 pet-friendly restaurants. Milan is home to 116 nature and parks, just over 350 pet-friendly hotels and an impressive 400 plus pet-friendly restaurants.
Medellin, Bogota and Cali in Colombia all feature in the top ten, making Colombia the country with the most cities in the top ten overall. Italy, Spain and the United States hold two cities within the top 10 locations for a pet vacation. For Italy, Milan and Rome, two iconic cities, rank first and in second place respectively. Barcelona and Madrid rank fifth equal and ninth and New York City and Los Angeles feature for the United States, coming in fourth and seventh equal place.
Which countries rank amongst the top for a pet-staycation?
With staycations on the rise globally, more and more people are looking to seek out new experiences and holidays closer to home. For those residents who are looking to stay local and opt for a staycation with their pets, which countries offer the best experience?
When assessing the top 30 performing countries, Brazil and Colombia hold three spots each, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte in Brazil and Medellin, Bogota and Cali in Columbia.
The best cities for parks, pet-friendly hotels and pet-friendly restaurants for travellers
For many travellers, different aspects of a holiday are more important than others, especially when factoring a pet into travel plans. The table below shows the best performing cities against parks, pet-friendly hotels and pet-friendly restaurants, helping aid where you might want to look when considering a holiday.
The definition of pet friendly in this instance looks at places where animals are welcome in a general sense, however clear descriptions of what this means restaurant by restaurant vary.
- Tokyo ranks as the best city for nature and parks, with more than 650 within the city
- Should a hotel be your most important filter, Berlin ranks as the city with the highest percentage of pet-friendly hotels (27.4%)
- If food is a priority for you and your pet, Medellin and Milan are the cities to visit, both having the highest percentage (5.0% and 4.5% respectively) of pet-friendly restaurants
Methodology
Cities have been collected using this seed list of the most populated cities in the world - https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities , with a maximum of 3 cities per country to ensure a variety of locations within the data set.
All data has been taken from TripAdvisor, where for each city the following was calculated:
- Number of attractions labelled "Nature & Parks"
- Number of pet-friendly hotels, as % of all hotels in the city
- Number of pet-friendly 5-star hotels, as % of all 5-star hotels in the city
- Number of dog-friendly (as proxy for pet-friendly) restaurants, as % of all restaurants in the city. The definition of pet friendly in this instance looks at places where animals are welcome in a general sense, however clear descriptions of what this means restaurant by restaurant vary.
Whilst this data has been pulled from TripAdvisor and is correct, it is understood that data may vary from source to source.
Each of the above metrics were then assigned a score, with a total adding up to 100. All cities were then scored accordingly and ranked on their total score. Cities with fewer than 10 "Nature & Parks" attractions, fewer than 100 restaurants, and fewer than 10 hotels listed on Tripadvisor were excluded from the final dataset.
