SHORT ANSWER
Yes. Starwood Pet Travel is an A+ accredited Better Business Bureau business, holds an active USDA pet transporter license (58-T-0846, valid through October 19, 2028), and has completed pet relocations to Italy for years, including recent military PCS moves to Milan. Customer sentiment is strongly positive on Trustpilot, where the company holds a 4.6 out of 5 rating, though like any international pet relocation company, review scores vary by platform and no shipper has a perfect record on every move. For a country like Italy, where the European Union's non-commercial pet entry rules are detailed and time-sensitive (and are changing again on October 1, 2026), working with an experienced, licensed coordinator meaningfully reduces the risk of a paperwork rejection or a missed deadline.
Two credentials matter most when you are deciding whether to trust a pet relocation company with an international move: BBB accreditation and USDA licensing, and Starwood Pet Travel holds both.
The company operates as Starwood Pet Travel, LLC out of Cape Coral, Florida, and has been BBB accredited since March 19, 2025, currently carrying an A+ rating. It is worth understanding what that grade does and does not measure. The BBB states plainly on its own profiles that "Customer Reviews are not used in the calculation of the BBB Letter Grade Rating." The A+ reflects how a business responds to complaints, its transparency with the BBB, and its business practices, not a star-based popularity score. Starwood has been operating as an LLC since May 23, 2013, giving it 13 years in business under its current corporate structure.
Separately, and arguably more importantly for anyone moving a live animal internationally, Starwood holds USDA license number 58-T-0846, issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and currently valid through October 19, 2028. This is the federal license required to operate as an animal transporter under the Animal Welfare Act. A company without an active USDA license has no legal standing to handle live animal transport in the way Starwood does, so confirming this license is current (directly with the USDA if you want to double-check) is one of the fastest ways to separate a legitimate pet shipper from a scam.
This is the part most comparison content glosses over, and it should not be smoothed over. Starwood's review profile is genuinely strong, but it is not uniform across every platform, and a family considering a five-figure international move deserves the full picture.
On Trustpilot, Starwood currently holds a 4.6 out of 5 rating from 44 reviews, which is a strong score for a service business handling complex, high-stress logistics. On Yelp, the picture is more mixed: the company sits at 3.1 out of 5 across 40 reviews. BBB's complaint file also shows a handful of disputes, mostly centered on pricing changes tied to kennel size requirements and communication gaps during transit, the kinds of issues that tend to surface most often on the most logistically complex moves (long international routes with layovers, oversized kennels, or last-minute airline changes).
None of this means Starwood is unreliable. It means the company's outcomes, like those of every international pet shipper, are not identical on every move, and the strongest signal of legitimacy is not a flawless review score but a verifiable license, a real physical address, a named leadership team, and a company that responds substantively to negative reviews rather than ignoring them. Starwood's BBB and Trustpilot profiles show detailed, individualized responses to complaints rather than form-letter replies, which is a meaningfully positive signal on its own.
Italy is a European Union member state, so pet entry follows the EU's standard non-commercial movement rules rather than a country-specific process like Australia's or the UK's. According to the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the requirements are as follows.
Your pet needs a working, ISO-compliant microchip implanted before its rabies vaccination, and the veterinarian must scan the microchip before administering the vaccine. If the rabies shot is a primary vaccination (the first after microchipping, or after any lapse in coverage), your pet must wait at least 21 days, or the vaccine manufacturer's stated immunity period, which can run up to 30 days, before traveling. A booster given without any lapse since the primary dose allows immediate travel.
A USDA-accredited veterinarian then issues a non-commercial EU health certificate, which USDA endorses electronically through the Veterinary Export Health Certification System (VEHCS). This certificate is valid for 30 days from issuance, and the USDA must endorse non-commercial certificates within 10 days of your pet's arrival in the EU. If you are not traveling with your pet on the same flight, or if a designated person is not traveling within five days of you, or if six or more pets are moving together outside of a competition or exhibition, you need the commercial health certificate instead, which requires a veterinary exam within 48 hours of departure.
Unlike Australia or Hawaii, Italy does not require quarantine or a rabies neutralizing antibody titer test (RNATT) for dogs and cats arriving from the United States. It also does not require the post-arrival tapeworm treatment that Finland, Malta, Ireland, and Norway require, since that rule applies only to entry into those specific countries after arriving elsewhere in the EU first.
One important, time-sensitive note: starting October 1, 2026, new non-commercial EU pet health certificates take effect under EU regulations 2026/131 and 2026/848, replacing the certificates currently in use. Certificates already in process could still be endorsed through September 30, 2026, but any move to Italy planned after that date needs to use the new certificate format. If your travel window straddles that date, confirm with your USDA-accredited veterinarian which version applies before your paperwork is finalized.
Adam Melton, VP of Strategic Initiatives at Starwood Pet Travel, has overseen enough European relocations to know where families most often run into trouble.
As he puts it: "Italy is one of the more forgiving EU destinations because there is no quarantine and no titer test to manage, but that simplicity can actually work against people. Families relax because they do not see a six-month waiting period like Australia, and then they miss the 21-day rabies window or let the health certificate's 30-day validity run out before travel. The rules are not complicated, but they are unforgiving of a missed date. That is really what our pet travel coordinators are for: making sure the microchip, vaccination, and certificate timeline all land in the right order the first time."
Reviews aggregated across platforms are useful, but a firsthand account from a completed Italy move tells you more about what to actually expect. On Starwood's own site, military spouse Cyrenity Menesses documented her family's PCS relocation of two dogs, Wellington and Keeva, from the United States to Milan, Italy. She wrote that working with her assigned coordinator "has been such a pleasure," adding that as a military family navigating an overseas PCS move, Starwood "took a huge burden off our shoulders when it came to figuring out" the logistics of an international pet move on top of an already demanding relocation. That kind of account, tied to a specific, verifiable move rather than a generic testimonial, is a more useful signal than an aggregate star rating alone.
For a straightforward EU relocation like Italy, where the core requirements are a microchip, a rabies vaccine on the right timeline, and a correctly endorsed health certificate, some pet owners choose to manage the process themselves with their veterinarian. Where a company like Starwood can coordinate the parts that are easy to get wrong under time pressure: syncing the vaccination date to the certificate's 30-day window, keeping up with regulatory changes like the October 2026 certificate update, booking airline-approved kennels and routing, and having a licensed, accredited business standing behind the move if something changes at the last minute. Given its A+ BBB rating, active USDA license, and a Trustpilot score well above the industry average, Starwood is a legitimate, verifiable option for an Italy relocation. As with any service costing several thousand dollars, it is worth requesting a written quote, confirming your coordinator's direct contact information, and reading recent reviews on more than one platform before booking.
For more on the broader European pet import process, see our complete guide to importing pets to Italy and our Italy relocation page for country-specific service details.