'I just sent two cats on a private jet to Mykonos - people are mad about their pets post-pandemic'
We’ve all read the headlines about how many people in the UK have bought new pets since the start of the pandemic. Back in March, the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association calculated it was more than three million households.
According to Pets4Homes, Google searches for ‘buy a puppy’ have increased by 115% on pre-pandemic levels. The most popular dog breed in the UK is the French bulldog and the one that has seen the biggest spike in popularity is the Cavapoo (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel crossed with a poodle).
As you might imagine, this has resulted in a lot more people travelling with their pets. Cloud-based global private and serviced accommodation platform AltoVita says it's seen a 50% rise in moves with pets since the start of the pandemic.
Some are taking them on holiday, others have had the big life re-think and are re-locating to more rural locations or new jobs or to be nearer family who live elsewhere. Whatever the reason, at the luxury end of the market, they doing it in style.
VIP Charter, FlyEliteJets has seen a real upsurge in clients taking their pets with them when they fly, both domestically and abroad. Recently, they’ve transported Chihuahuas, Dobermans, Afghan Hounds, two macaws and some very rare white cats.
At the beginning, this was people jetting off to spend lockdown in a bubble in their second homes in the Channel Islands, the Scottish Highlands, Sardinia, St Barts and one on an island in the middle of a Canadian lake
“Two of our best known clients, an international female singer and a fashion designer, take their dogs with them wherever they go,” a FlyEliteJet spokesperson tells me. “So we’ve flown them to all the major fashion shows, to villas in the Caribbean and to the Alps, where the dogs pop on special outfits and footwear to protect them from frostbite. Both pets, who will only drink room temperature Evian spring water, came from Battersea Dog’s Home so are now living the dream.”
Earlier this year, luxury charter company PrivateFly arranged a special flight from Birmingham with three Labradors on board, as they relocated to Malaga with their owners. To help make it a day to remember, PrivateFly gifted the dogs with their own personalised blankets and welcomed them on board with a selection of VIP dog treats, as they jetted off to Spain to start their new lives in the sun.
We know we are a nation of pet lovers but however much support we get along the way, isn’t travelling with them more hassle than it’s worth, even for the super-wealthy?
“Dogs are an integral part of the family, you don’t want to leave without them,” says Denise Elphick, founder of dog-friendly luxury travel site PetsPyjamas. “They’ve been very good companions over lockdown and they deserve a treat. We’ve definitely noticed people are booking into much more luxurious hotels and villas post-lockdown, to recover from that awful year.”
Elphick and her husband Rory have always travelled with their dogs, including on their European road trip honeymoon, where they stayed at Le Meurice with their Norfolk Terriers Heidi and Rufus, who were given name tags and treated like royalty and also at Abbaye de la Bussière near Dijon, which has a resident Bernese mountain dog.
“I think dogs are such ice breakers, people chat to you more when you’ve got them, even in the really high end hotels,” adds Elphick. “Plus they’re not glued to their mobile phones. One of the things I love about the Abbaye de la Bussière is that dogs can join you for dinner even in the really fancy Michelin-starred restaurant.”
But while people want their pets with them at their final destination, not everyone actually wants to travel with them. Last year, luxury London-based concierge service Knightsbridge Circle, arranged for a cat to travel alone by private jet to the Bahamas to join its owners who had relocated their business. More recently, they did the same thing for two dogs in the Netherlands joining their owners in Boston.
“We’ve just sent two cats on a private jet to Mykonos and earlier this summer,” Starr Luxury Jets CEO Ikenna Ordor tells me. “They’d been left with a sitter but the owner wanted to stay out longer and missed them too much. Earlier this summer we delivered a client’s dog to his Cornwall retreat in a Bentley.”
At Gleneagles in Perthshire, home to resident golden Labrador Henry, one family likes to fly their dog ahead of them in a private jet followed by a private chauffeur transfer and doggy check-in, ahead of the rest of the family. Dogs are allowed in certain rooms for an additional cost of £100 per night or there’s a pretty luxurious kennel within the grounds.
I should probably confess now, out I’m sitting at my desk writing this with Pumpkin on my lap, the prettiest little baby ginger tom we bought a month ago. While I guess he would be considered a pandemic pet, he was no impulse buy. My daughter, now ten, had been asking for a cat for about seven years. But we're off to Ireland on a thrice-postponed trip to see my father-in-law in a couple of weeks. Anyone up for cat-sitting?
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