For HR, Global Mobility & RMCs
Corporate Pet Relocation
Foufoufly handles pet relocation for employers and relocation management companies moving staff into and out of Dubai. Billed to the company against a purchase order, invoiced with our TRN so your finance team can recover the VAT, reported against each assignment, and run by a named coordinator your assignee deals with directly.
The commercial case is simple. A pet that cannot travel does not stay a pet problem for long — it becomes a delayed start date, a senior hire who will not fly, or an assignment that has to be re-planned. We take that risk off your desk before it reaches your executive committee.
The commercial case
Why pet moves become assignment risk
Mobility teams set start dates against notice periods, visa processing and school terms. Pet protocols run on a different clock entirely — one set by veterinary waiting periods, carrier acceptance rules and destination authorities, none of which negotiate. When the two collide, the assignment moves, not the protocol.
| Scenario | What actually happens | Exposure |
|---|---|---|
| Senior hire posted to Sydney with 8 weeks' notice | The UAE is a Group 3 country for Australia: a rabies antibody test starts a fixed 180-day clock from the day the laboratory receives the sample, a BICON permit takes 20–40 business days, then a minimum 10 days in quarantine at Mickleham | Six to seven months against an eight-week start date. The family travels without the animal or the assignment slips |
| Arrival in Dubai with a prohibited breed | The UAE prohibits import of Pit Bulls, mastiff types, Japanese Tosa and their hybrids. The dog cannot enter — there is no permit, appeal or fee that changes it | Discovered late, this is a hire who declines the posting. Discovered at offer stage, it is a solvable conversation |
| Q3 start date with a flat-faced breed | Carriers refuse live animals above roughly 29.5°C along the route, lower still for snub-nosed breeds. Dubai averages 40°C in June and 41°C in July and August | Night departures only, scarce capacity, or the move waits until autumn |
| Employee has three pets | The UAE permits a maximum of two pets imported per person per year | The third animal needs a different sponsor or a different year. Better known now than at the airport |
| Vaccination record checked the week before travel | A rabies vaccination must predate travel by 21 days, and if the microchip was implanted after the vaccination the vaccination is not recognised at all | Three weeks added at the worst possible moment, entirely avoidable with a five-minute check at offer stage |
What we actually recommend
Screen the pet at offer stage, not at acceptance. Breed, age, microchip date, rabies date and destination — five fields, answered in a day. It is the cheapest risk control in the whole mobility process, and it moves every one of the scenarios above from crisis to calendar.
The detail behind each of these: UAE pet import requirements, breed eligibility for dogs, how long relocation takes and, where a date has already slipped, urgent relocation handling.
Policy design
How companies structure the benefit
Pet relocation has moved from ad hoc accommodation to deliberate policy, and quickly. Demand for professional pet relocation from corporate employees grew by nearly 300% between 2019 and 2024. If you are writing or revising a policy, this is how the market currently caps it.
Two observations from running these moves rather than surveying them.
A cash cap behaves badly on this particular benefit. Costs are driven by crate size and destination protocol, not by employee choice — a Great Dane to Melbourne and a cat to London differ by a factor of several, and neither is negotiable by the assignee. A cap set at the average funds the cat fully and leaves the dog owner with a bill they did not expect, at the exact moment you want them focused on the job. If you use a cap, set it per pet and publish the exceptions process.
Capping by number of pets is the cleaner control — and it aligns with the UAE's own limit of two pets imported per person per year, so a two-pet cap on a Dubai-bound policy costs you nothing in practice and is easy to defend.
If you would rather not write it yourself
We will draft the pet clause for your relocation policy — eligibility, caps, exceptions, who arranges what, and the offer-stage screening question — and you are free to use it whether or not you appoint us. Ask for it by email; there is no charge and no obligation.
Procurement and billing
How we work with employers and RMCs
The service is the same one we run for private clients. What changes is the commercial wrapper, and it is built so that your finance team does not have to chase anything.
- Invoiced to the company or the RMC, not the employee. The assignee is never out of pocket and never has to submit a claim. Where your policy prefers a miscellaneous allowance instead, we invoice the employee directly and provide a compliant tax invoice for their claim.
- Valid UAE tax invoices. Every invoice is issued as a Tax Invoice showing our name, address and TRN, and your name, address and TRN, with the 5% VAT stated separately — the form the Federal Tax Authority requires for a B2B supply, and the form your finance team needs to recover input VAT on the expense. Your own tax adviser should confirm recoverability in your circumstances; the invoice will not be the reason it fails.
- Purchase order references carried end to end. PO number on the quotation, the invoice and the statement.
- Consolidated monthly invoicing for accounts running several moves, with each assignment as a separate line and a cost centre reference if you use them.
- Credit terms on account once an account is opened, rather than payment before each move.
- Fixed quotations, valid for a defined period, so a budget approved in one quarter is still a real number in the next.
- One account contact plus one named coordinator per assignment. You deal with the first, your assignee deals with the second, and neither of you repeats anything.
Tax invoice requirements are published by the UAE Federal Tax Authority. Nothing on this page is tax advice — confirm treatment with your own adviser.
What the assignee gets
The part that determines whether your employee arrives able to concentrate. Brief, because you are not the one who needs convincing — but it is the half of the service they will judge you on.
A named person, not a portal
One coordinator from first call to delivery confirmation. They do not repeat their pet's medical history to four people, and they are not managing a supplier while managing a move.
Everything arranged, not advised
Permits filed, veterinary appointments booked and held, crate measured and supplied weeks early for acclimatisation, customs cleared at both ends, delivery to the new address. See our process.
Confirmation at every checkpoint
Collection, lodgement, loading, landing, clearance, delivery. The anxiety in a pet move is mostly silence, and silence is the thing we remove. Accompaniment is available where it is warranted — see pet nanny service.
Where a senior assignment justifies it, our White Glove tier adds pre-flight boarding, flight nanny accompaniment and a destination settling-in visit — and, where a breed or a summer date closes off commercial routes entirely, private charter arranged at cost.
Reporting, duty of care and confidentiality
A duty-of-care programme has to be able to answer what happened to the employee's animal, in writing, without a phone call. Ours does.
What you get reported
Assignment reference, pet details, route, milestone dates, flight and air waybill number, clearance and delivery confirmation, and the final invoice against the PO. Monthly summary across all active moves for accounts running more than one.
Documented, dated and retrievable — so if the question is asked six months later, the answer is a file rather than somebody's memory.
Confidentiality
Knowing that a named executive is leaving the country before it has been announced is commercially sensitive information. We treat assignment details as confidential by default and will sign your NDA on request rather than asking for ours.
We do not use client names or logos in marketing without written permission. The case examples on this site are anonymised for that reason.
Every shipment is crated to the IATA Live Animals Regulations and permits are filed against the current published requirements from MOCCAE and the destination authority. Documentation standards are set out in the pet travel documents checklist.
Multiple pets and multiple assignments
Volume changes the logistics more than it changes the paperwork. Three things worth knowing before you plan a wave of moves.
Live-animal capacity is finite per flight. Two families relocating on the same date with four animals between them will not necessarily fit on one aircraft, and cargo space is booked roughly seven to fourteen days ahead as a floor. Give us the wave dates early and we will sequence the bookings rather than compete with ourselves for space.
A household's pets can often share a container. Two compatible cats of up to 14 kg each may travel in one container under the IATA rules, which materially changes the cost of a two-cat household. Dogs are crated individually and sized to the animal — see dog shipping for how that works.
Office relocations and site openings are planned, not urgent. If you are standing up a Dubai office in nine months, the pet screening for the whole cohort takes us a week and removes every scenario in the first table on this page. Inbound detail in pet relocation to Dubai.
Routes we run most often for corporate accounts: UK to Dubai, USA to Dubai, India to Dubai, Dubai to the UK and Dubai to the USA.
Commercials
What it costs a company
The same published tiers we quote everybody: Essentials from AED 4,000, Managed from AED 8,000, White Glove from AED 15,000, all inclusive of 5% VAT. Corporate accounts are not quoted differently per move, because a supplier whose price depends on who is asking is a supplier your procurement team will eventually regret.
| Route | Managed, all-in | Typical assignment use |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom → Dubai | AED 12,000–18,000 | The most common inbound corporate route |
| United States → Dubai | AED 13,000–20,000 | Longer sector, additional certification in some states |
| Dubai → United Kingdom | AED 13,000–20,000 | Repatriation at end of assignment |
| Dubai → Australia | AED 20,000–30,000 | Plan six to seven months ahead — see the first table |
Third-party charges — the rabies antibody test, an APHA endorsement, the MOCCAE arrival inspection, destination quarantine nights — are billed at cost and shown separately on the invoice, never marked up. Volume terms are available once an account has run several moves; ask rather than assume. Full breakdown in our pet relocation cost guide, and the mechanics of how a figure is built in pet shipping Dubai.
Experience
Why appoint Foufoufly
Five hundred relocations, zero rejections. Based in Dubai rather than represented here, with direct cargo accounts at Emirates SkyCargo, Etihad Cargo, Qatar Airways Cargo, IAG Cargo, Lufthansa Cargo and AFKLMP Cargo — so when live-animal space is the constraint on an assignment date, we ask six carriers at once.
We will also tell your mobility team when a move should not happen on the date requested. That is worth more to you than a supplier who agrees to everything and reports the problem in week six.
A recent account
A professional services firm opening a Dubai office moved eleven staff over five months, four of them with animals. Screening the cohort at offer stage surfaced two problems early: one family's dog was a prohibited breed under UAE import rules, and another had a July start date with a French Bulldog. The first was resolved by the family rehoming within their own extended family before accepting — a hard conversation, but in March rather than at Dubai cargo in July. The second moved to a September arrival with the employee starting remotely for three weeks. Neither became an escalation, and the office opened on schedule.
Sam Jamal founded Foufoufly after seeing how opaque this process is from the owner's side. The practice is IPATA-aligned and works to the IATA Live Animals Regulations on every shipment. More about the team, and our service tiers in full.
FAQ
Corporate pet relocation — frequently asked questions
Can you invoice the company directly instead of the employee?
Yes. We invoice the employer or the relocation management company against a purchase order, so the assignee is never out of pocket and never files a claim. Where your policy uses a miscellaneous allowance instead, we invoice the employee and provide a compliant tax invoice for their claim. Either way the invoice is issued as a UAE Tax Invoice showing both parties' TRNs with the 5% VAT stated separately.
Can our finance team recover the VAT on a pet relocation?
Input VAT on a properly invoiced business expense is recoverable where the invoice meets the Federal Tax Authority's requirements — a document headed Tax Invoice, showing the supplier's name, address and TRN, the recipient's details, a description of the service, the VAT amount and the total. Our invoices are issued in that form as standard. Whether the expense is recoverable in your particular circumstances is a question for your own tax adviser, not for us.
How far ahead should we screen an assignee's pet?
At offer stage, before the start date is agreed. Five fields — breed, age, microchip date, rabies vaccination date and destination — answered in a day. That single check catches prohibited breeds, the 21-day rabies rule, microchips implanted after vaccination, and destinations like Australia whose 180-day antibody wait makes a short notice period impossible.
How should we cap a pet relocation benefit?
Most companies cap by number of pets (43%), then by cash amount (29%), then by pet type (20%), with 10% applying no limit. We would suggest capping by number rather than cash: cost is driven by crate size and destination protocol rather than employee choice, so a cash cap set at the average underfunds large dogs and long-protocol destinations. A two-pet cap also aligns with the UAE's own limit of two pets imported per person per year.
What happens if an employee's dog is a breed the UAE prohibits?
The animal cannot be imported — the UAE prohibits Pit Bulls, mastiff types, Japanese Tosa and their hybrids, and no permit, fee or appeal changes that. Found at offer stage it is a difficult but manageable conversation with options. Found at the airport it is a failed assignment. It is the strongest argument for screening early.
Will you sign an NDA and keep assignment details confidential?
Yes. We treat assignment details as confidential by default, since knowing a named executive is relocating before it is announced is commercially sensitive, and we will sign your NDA rather than insisting on our own. We do not use client names or logos in marketing without written permission, which is why every case example on this site is anonymised.
Take the pet risk off your desk
Tell us about the assignments you have coming. We will screen the animals, flag the dates that will not work, and give you fixed figures you can put in a budget.
hello@foufoufly.com · +971 50 451 0918
Subject to eligibility. Terms apply. All prices in AED, inclusive of 5% UAE VAT. Third-party charges billed at cost. Nothing on this page is tax advice.