What Dog Owners Will Pay For in a Hotel

In June 2023 five researchers at Kyung Hee University in Seoul published the most useful piece of academic research a hotelier can read before spending money on guests who travel with a dog. They asked 491 dog owners to choose between hotel packages at different prices and, from thousands of those choices, worked out what each feature of a hotel was worth per night. Owners would pay about $117 a night more for a hotel with a play area for dogs, $66 more for a lounge where staff would mind the dog, and $146 more for the same lounge run by a certified dog behaviour specialist. They would pay $57 a night less for a hotel that added a dog bed and steps to the room, and $60 less if it added treats and toys as well. The price of the room carried less than one per cent of the decision.

Everything a dog owner valued was outside the bedroom, in a space built for the dog or a person trained to look after it, and everything they marked down was inside it, in the welcome basket most hotels think of as their dog offer. The study was written for academics and reads that way, which is why almost nobody who runs a hotel has seen it. This guide explains it in plain English, section by section, separates the authors' findings from our reading of what they mean for a hotel, and ends with an appendix that walks through the mathematics for anyone who wants to check the working.

This is a guide to a single peer reviewed study, How much are you willing to pay when you travel with a pet? Evidence from a choice experiment, by Yeonwoo Joo, Yunkyoung Jo, Hyeona Jo, Hwi-eun Choi and Yoo-shik Yoon, published in Current Issues in Tourism and funded by the BK21 FOUR programme of the National Research Foundation of Korea. The research is theirs. Every figure in the guide is taken from the published paper, checked against its tables, and the two places where we do our own arithmetic are marked as ours. Where we interpret a finding for a hotel outside Korea, the guide says so, and the authors' own recommendation is quoted separately from it.

The guide also sets out the study's limits as the authors state them: a Korean sample, mostly small dogs, a method that records stated rather than actual choices, and four attributes tested out of the many a hotel could offer. One discrepancy between the paper's printed price coefficient and its published willingness to pay figures is noted in the appendix as a question for the authors rather than a fault in the result.

The question the Kyung Hee team set out to answer is the one every general manager asks when a dog programme reaches the budget: of all the things a hotel could offer a guest travelling with a dog, which ones would that guest actually pay for, and how much? A choice experiment answers it without ever asking directly. It shows people complete hotels at different prices and lets the pattern of their choices reveal the value of each part. The answer the owners gave was places and people, not things in the room.

The guide covers who did the research and why, how the experiment was built and run, who took part, what the model found, why the welcome basket scored below zero, the three kinds of owner the data revealed and why they all wanted the same things, what it means for a hotel in Britain, Europe or North America, and what the study cannot tell you. Two appendices explain how the numbers were made and list the earlier research the study rests on.

Who did the research and why. The team at Kyung Hee University's Smart Tourism Education Platform, the public funding behind the work, the journal and its review process, and the Korean demand that prompted the question.

How the experiment worked. What a choice experiment is, how the four attributes and their levels were chosen, the orthogonal design, the pre-test, the research panel and the quota sample.

Who took part. The 491 owners and their dogs: sex, age, region, income, dog size, monthly spending and travel history.

What they found. The six prices, the model's fit, the weight of each attribute in the decision, and the detail that owners were quite prepared to book nothing at all.

Why more in the room was worth less. The authors' explanation, what the study did and did not measure, and why the bowl and the bed are the floor rather than the offer.

Three kinds of owner, one answer. The latent class result: the enthusiast, the sceptic and the determined owner, and why all three put their money in the same place.

What it means for your hotel. The authors' recommendation, and our reading of it: keep the basics, give the dog somewhere to go, put a person in charge, compete on what you offer rather than the rate, judge dogs on behaviour, and make the space an event.

What the study does not tell you. Its limits as the authors state them, and how to use a Korean number in a hotel somewhere else.

Appendices. How the numbers were made, from random utility to the latent class model, and the research the study builds on.