Traveling with Pets: Investigating the Urban, Staycation Tourism Experience

ABSTRACT Research on pet tourism in the Chinese context deserves more attention as pet ownership continues to rise in urban areas. Although previous studies have explored the motivations and constraints of traveling with pets, research related to tourists’ experiences remain limited. To address this gap, this study investigates tourists’ experiences with pets across all three phases of travel (i.e., pre-travel, on-site, and post-travel). Specifically, this study adopted a criterion sampling technique to recruit pet owners for in-depth interviews to understand the factors that affected their staycation experiences in an urban setting. The findings showed that the lack of information related to pet tourism emerged as an important issue in the pre-travel phase, while transportation and policy inconsistencies were key issues during the on-site travel phase. In the post-travel phase, pet tourists purchased souvenirs related to their pets, and these souvenirs serve as evidence of their travels and a memento of their experience as tourists. Overall, this study contributes by enriching the literature on the travel experiences of staycation pet tourists, and by providing practical recommendations on how practitioners could promote pet tourism in urban settings.