Corporate pet relocation is up 300%, and it is becoming a standard mobility benefit

Moving a household across borders increasingly means moving the dog too, on the company's dime. Corporate inquiries for professional pet relocation rose nearly 300% in five years, and by 2025 almost half of large employers covered pet shipment in some form. For anyone in pet logistics, relocation management, or HR benefits, a fringe perk just turned into table stakes.

Starwood and AIRINC data show pet relocation going mainstream

Two datasets, one first-party and one benchmarking, point the same direction.

Starwood Pet Travel's client data shows corporate employees seeking professional pet relocation rose from 1,163 inquiries in 2019 to 4,545 in 2024, holding at 4,504 in 2025, with 2026 on pace for a record. Across 2019 to 2025 the company averaged more than 3,200 corporate inquiries a year.

The employer side is catching up. AIRINC's Long Term Assignment Survey, drawn from 166 global companies in 2025, found 49% now provide pet shipment to the host location in some form, up from 37% in 2022. The share offering no pet benefit at all fell from 62% to 51%.

The policies are also getting more structured. Among employers that cover pet shipment, the most common limit is by number of pets (43%), followed by a cash cap (29%) and restrictions by pet type (20%). Only 10% place no limits at all.

The demand spans industries and borders. Higher education, technology, oil and energy, professional services, and construction are the most active sectors. The United States drives the most volume, with meaningful demand from the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and South Africa.

Why a maturing benefit reshapes three businesses at once

The interesting part is not that people love their pets. It is that a soft preference is hardening into formal corporate policy, and formal policy is where money and vendors follow.

End-to-end complexity is the pet-logistics moat

A single small dog flying in-cabin domestically is a commodity move. A dog going to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or the UK is months of import permits, USDA health endorsements, quarantine reservations, and multi-carrier coordination. That complexity is the business. It is why a corporate relocation channel, with repeat volume and a company paying the bill, is far more valuable than one-off consumer moves, and why specialists who manage it end-to-end can command premium pricing.

HR benefit design is the next place to attach

Once pet shipment sits in a written mobility policy with caps and pet-count limits, it becomes a line item that relocation management companies, benefits brokers, and pet-insurance players can build products around. The stated ROI is assignment acceptance. If a pet is the reason an employee says no to a posting, solving the pet logistics removes a real source of friction in the competition for mobile talent.

The caveat worth keeping

The 300% figure is Starwood's own inquiry volume, and Starwood sells this service, so it has an incentive to show a rising line. AIRINC's survey skews toward large multinationals with formal mobility programs. Both are directional rather than a full-market census. What makes it credible is that two independent datasets, one operational and one survey-based, move together.

For global mobility managers, the practical read is that pet relocation has crossed from ad hoc exception to expected benefit, and the programs still treating it as a favor are now behind the median.

What the 2026 volume record will confirm

Watch whether pet relocation gets folded into standard relocation packages by default rather than granted case by case. That shift, more than any single data point, is what turns a benefit into an industry.

Two markers will tell the story. Whether the large relocation management companies build dedicated pet modules or keep referring the work out to specialists like Starwood. And whether pet insurers and wellness-benefit providers move to attach coverage to the relocation moment, when a pet owner is most anxious and most willing to pay.

If 2026 sets the record Starwood expects, the number stops being a novelty and becomes a planning assumption for every global mobility team.

Source: Starwood Pet Travel and AIRINC pet-relocation data via PR Newswire