AutoCamp, the outdoor hotel chain known for its Airstream suites, has teamed up with Fi, the maker of GPS collars for dogs, on a package aimed at people who won’t travel without their pets. The AutoCamp VIP, short for Very Important Pet, covers a two-night stay in an Airstream suite, cabin or adventure tent, waives the pet fee and hands the guest a Fi Mini tracker with three months of membership. Treats, a collapsible bowl and a dog mat for the stay come with it. Fi members, in turn, get 15% off AutoCamp stays booked through the Fi app.
Neither company published a price for the package. It is available at all AutoCamp properties: Sonoma, Yosemite, Cape Cod, Joshua Tree, the Catskills, Zion, Sequoia and Asheville, with a Hill Country site in Texas coming.
Why the pet fee is the real offer
Pet fees are one of the most resented line items in American hotels, and they tend to appear late in the booking flow. Waiving one in a bundled package is a cleaner way to win a dog owner than discounting the room. It also filters the guest. Someone who books a pet package has told you they’re bringing the dog, which helps a property plan cleaning and room allocation.
The tracker is the hook that makes the partnership more than a coupon swap. AutoCamp sites sit at the edge of national parks and forests, where a dog that bolts after a deer can be gone in a minute. The Fi Mini clips onto a collar and sets a Safe Zone around the campsite that alerts the owner if the dog leaves it. Fi’s own data suggests owners do exactly that on trips: Safe Zones created while traveling were 38% more likely to be in rural areas than home ones, one in four was at least 100 miles from home, and nearly half stayed active for a day or longer.
The demand numbers
The partnership leans on two figures. Tripadvisor’s 2026 Travel Trendcast found bookings for dog-friendly experiences up 260% from a year earlier. CivicScience found that 26% of pet owners planning summer travel in 2026 meant to take their pets, up from 17% in 2024. Those are big moves in a short time, and they explain why hotel groups that once tolerated dogs are now marketing to them.
For Fi, the logic runs the other way. Its trackers are sold on subscription, and a free device with three months of membership is a customer acquisition cost, paid partly by AutoCamp’s marketing. If even a share of those guests keep paying after month three, the hotel stay has bought Fi a subscriber.
What other properties can take from it
The lesson for hotels is to price the dog in, not on top. A bundled pet package with a clear benefit beats a surprise fee every time, and partnering with a pet brand gives you something to give away that costs less than a room discount. The lesson for pet brands is that travel is a moment of worry for owners, and worry sells safety products. Expect more of these tie-ins as pet travel keeps growing.