Portugal Pet Moves Jump 77% as Americans Relocate

More than 800 families asked a single pet-relocation company to move their animals to Portugal last year, a 77% jump from 2022 that outpaces almost every other destination the firm serves. Starwood Pet Travel, an international pet shipping company, says the surge tracks a broader wave of Americans relocating to the country for residency, and that 2025 was its busiest year yet for Portugal moves specifically.

Starwood sees record demand for Portugal pet moves

The company's internal booking data shows Portugal-bound pet relocation requests rose from 454 in 2022 to 804 in 2025, a 77% increase over three years. Starwood Pet Travel, an IATA-certified relocation company that handles import documentation, health certificates, crate training and logistics for international pet moves, has fielded more than 3,100 Portugal requests since it started tracking the destination in 2016.

Dogs make up nearly 75% of the pets the company moves to Portugal, and more than 40% of families relocate two or more animals at once. In a survey of its own customers, Starwood found pet safety during transit was the top concern, cited by 46% of respondents, ahead of cost (25%), transparency about the process (18%) and full-service convenience (11%).

"Portugal has gone from a niche request to one of our fastest-growing destinations," said Brett Furlong, the company's CEO, in the release. Families "want a partner who treats that move with the same care" as any other part of a relocation, he said.

Laurie Lawson, a Starwood customer who relocated to Portugal, described the company's role in navigating EU import rules directly: "The Starwood team made it a seamless process and managed all aspects of our pet's journey in compliance with EU regulations." The United States is the company's primary source market for Portugal moves, with the United Kingdom a distant second.

Pet relocation demand is tracking America's Portugal exodus

Starwood's numbers line up with a much larger migration story. Nearly 21,000 Americans were registered as residents in Portugal in 2024, up from 14,126 the year before and just 2,888 in 2017, according to AIMA and U.S. Embassy data compiled by Staywise. Americans accounted for roughly 22% of all D8 digital-nomad visas Portugal issued in 2023 and 2024, more than any other nationality.

Looking at Starwood's own figures, Portugal pet-relocation demand is growing at a compound annual rate of about 21% a year since 2022, by The Underbite's calculation. That trails the roughly 49% jump in Portugal's American resident population between 2023 and 2024 alone, which suggests pet relocation bookings, while real, are still catching up to the pace of human migration rather than leading it. Families tend to move first and arrange pet logistics closer to the move date, so a lag between resident growth and pet-shipping demand is expected rather than a sign of a soft category.

The takeaway isn't really about Portugal specifically. It's more so that a single destination country's immigration policy, in this case Portugal's D7 and D8 visa programs, can move demand for a niche logistics service by double-digit percentages within a few years. That makes destination-country immigration rules a leading indicator worth tracking directly, not an afterthought behind broader pet humanization spending narratives. A tightening of Portugal's visa rules, a higher income threshold, a processing slowdown at AIMA, would likely show up in relocation bookings before it shows up in almost any other pet industry data set operators typically watch.

It also points to where pet relocation companies should build operational depth next. If Starwood and its competitors are seeing outsized growth from a handful of migration-driven markets, EU countries with active digital-nomad or residency programs, Spain, Italy and Greece among them, look like more defensible expansion targets than broad geographic coverage, since the regulatory expertise involved (EU pet passport rules, quarantine requirements, import documentation) is destination-specific and doesn't transfer cleanly between countries. The category's broader growth shows up in adjacent bets too, including a competing operator's recent push into door-to-door ground logistics for international pet moves, a sign that investment in premium pet-travel infrastructure is broadening beyond the flight itself.

Cost and process transparency, the second- and third-ranked concerns in Starwood's own survey, also point to an underserved part of the category. International pet relocation involves country-specific import permits, rabies titer tests with mandated wait periods, and airline cargo or in-cabin rules that vary by carrier, a compliance maze that's opaque enough that "will this actually work" is a legitimate fear for a family already managing a cross-border move. Operators who can make that process legible, not just execute it, have room to differentiate on more than price.

What happens if Portugal's visa rules tighten

Watch Portugal's AIMA for any change to D7 or D8 income thresholds or processing times. The 2026 D8 income floor already rose to €3,680 a month, up from €3,480 in 2025, an increase that could cool applications at the margin even as underlying demand stays high.

Also look to see whether competitors publish similar country-specific breakdowns of their own. Starwood's numbers give pet-relocation operators and adjacent businesses, international movers, relocation-focused real estate agents, immigration attorneys, a data point to plan around that this category rarely produces.

The next test is whether 2026 requests keep pace with 2025's record year, or whether Portugal's rising cost of living and tightening residency rules start to slow the wave of American arrivals that the pet relocation numbers are riding.

Source: Starwood Pet Travel via PR Newswire