Staying in pet-friendly hotels: examining the experiences of pet-friendly hotel customers in Turkey

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the main components that shape the accommodation experiences of customers staying in pet-friendly hotels by analyzing online reviews through a qualitative approach informed by the service ecosystem perspective. Design/methodology/approach For the purpose of the research, a total of 1,723 comments made by customers who stayed in animal-friendly hotels on the TripAdvisor platform between 2023 and 2024 were manually collected and subsequently analyzed using content analysis. Findings Based on the collected data, six main components underlying the experiences of customers staying in pet-friendly hotels were reached. The components obtained are quality of service, other facilities offered by the hotel, pet acceptance policy, hygiene and cleanliness, safety and accessibility of the hotel and price-value perception. Originality/value Although there are a number of studies based on customers’ travel with pets, there is no research that focuses on analyzing the underlying dimensions of these experiences from the customer’ perspective through online comments. In this context, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first research to examine the experiences of customers traveling with pets using a netnographic approach and is expected to fill this gap.