Ranked: Pet-friendly Is the amenity most French hotels are leaving on the table.

TLDR

• The finding: PriceLabs analyzed pet policies for hotels in every French city above 50,000 residents. Besançon leads at 40.46% of hotels accepting pets, and not one city clears the 50% line.
• The why: The largest metros are the least accommodating: Paris sits at 15% and doesn't crack the top 50. The "pets allowed" filter on an online travel agency (OTA) thins the field fast in most markets.
• The operator action: If you run a 10–70 room independent hotel in a low-supply city, opening two or three rooms to pets puts you in an OTA filter with few rivals. Test it as a priced, bookable amenity before committing the whole property.

Booking.com knows which hotels take dogs, and it lets travelers filter on it. That single filter is where this data gets interesting for operators. PriceLabs pulled pet policies for every French city with more than 50,000 residents and at least 400 hotels in the data, and the result is a market that has quietly under-supplied a growing demand: even the best city in France turns away nearly six in ten pet-owning guests.

Besançon leads, but the ceiling sits under half the market

Besançon tops the ranking at 40.46% of hotels accepting animals, the highest score in the study, and comfortably ahead of any large French city. Metz (38.88%) and Grenoble (35.88%) follow, with Béziers (32.48%) and Toulon (31.77%) rounding out the top five. The headline number, though, is the one nobody reaches: no French city crosses 50%. In the country's single most pet-friendly market, the majority of hotels still say no.

The biggest cities are the least welcoming

The pattern that should catch an operator's eye is where the supply is thinnest. France's marquee metros cluster at the bottom: Marseille (22.66%), Toulouse (21.76%), Bordeaux (20.59%), and Montpellier (20.27%) all sit below 23%, and Paris — the country's largest hotel market — accepts pets at just 15% and misses the top 50 entirely. In practice, a traveler filtering for "pets allowed" in Paris is choosing from roughly one hotel in seven. For an independent hotel in a market like that, the filter is not a constraint. It is a near-empty shelf.

The south and the Grand Est punch above their size

Two regions dominate the upper table. Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur places eight cities in the top 50, and the Grand Est carries the top ten with Metz, Reims, Strasbourg, and Mulhouse. What links most of the leaders is size: mid-sized cities, walkable, outside the heaviest tourist crush, are consistently more open to animals than the big destinations. That is the demand signal worth reading — the segment is most under-served precisely where hotel competition is fiercest.

What this means for operators

1. Treat "pets allowed" as a competitive filter, not a housekeeping headache. In any market where fewer than a quarter of hotels accept animals, switching on the Booking.com pet filter drops you into a shortlist with few competitors. Test it by designating two or three ground-floor or hard-floor rooms as pet rooms, turning the filter on, and tracking how those rooms' occupancy moves against the rest of the property over one full booking cycle.
2. Price the amenity; don't absorb it. A cleaning surcharge or a modest pet fee covers the incremental laundry and deep-clean cost and screens for committed guests. Pet-owning travelers tend to book longer stays and plan further ahead, which smooths your pace.
3. Watch the average daily rate (ADR) you can hold. Scarcity on an amenity usually supports a premium. In a 15%-supply market, a pet-friendly independent may be able to hold rate against pet-owning demand rather than discount into it. Compare your pet-room ADR to your standard rooms after 60 days before drawing a conclusion.