RANKING – 66% of travelers would choose their destination based on their little companion. Which city should we go to?
Six out of ten French people share their lives with a pet. Among them, a good number choose to take them on holiday, despite the hassle it can sometimes cause, despite the extra cost it often entails. According to a survey conducted by the Emprunte Mon Toutou platform, 66% of travelers would even choose their destination based on their dog.
But any animal lover will tell you that finding a “dog” or “cat friendly” hotel or apartment can quickly become a headache. In this regard, are there some destinations that are more inviting than others? According to holiday rental platform Holidu, definitely. The site has classified French cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants according to the proportion of homes that accept our beloved furballs.
And Strasbourg comes out on top, with more than one in four rentals (25.4%) accepting dogs and cats. Then come two big cities in the south, Marseille and Nice.
The complete ranking* of the “most pet-friendly cities”
- Strasbourg (25.38%)
- Marseille (21.63%)
- Nice (20.66%)
- Lyon (20.19%)
- Toulouse (19.97%)
- Montpellier (19.78%)
- Bordeaux (19.57%)
- Small (18.83%)
- Paris (17.11%)
- Rennes (16.93%)
- Nantes (16.16%)
Two useful websites
This ranking is of course far from exhaustive. To determine whether a destination is welcoming or not, it would be useful to assess the proportion of its restaurants that accept animals, the beaches where they are not persona non grata or even to know if the place has dog parks. For a more complete overview, the 30 Million Friends Foundation’s platform “Holidays with friends” is full of practical advice and good addresses. Like the “Chien Voyageur” place, imagined by a globetrotter who traveled the world with his border collie. Let’s remember that every year tens of thousands of animals are abandoned on their way to vacation, especially in the summer. An animal that leaves with its owner is one less animal at SPA. Everyone in Strasbourg!
*Ranking established for cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants based on the percentage of holiday homes that accept pets according to Holidu data per 2 October 2024.
