Tens of thousands of people around the world follow the daily exploits of the business run by University of Staffordshire alumna Adele de Caso and her daughter, Sofia.

Paco’s Place, in Trentham, is a Dachshund Hotel – one of just a handful in the UK.

They offer a boutique, family experience for Dachshunds when their human family members are on holiday which is so sought after that pet-lovers travel from as far as The Lake District and London to use the service.

The business, set up by Adele and Sofia in May 2018, has around 46,000 followers on Instagram and 50,000 on TikTok with some of their posts receiving hundreds of thousands of likes.

Paco’s Place is becoming a known brand sought out for collaborations by other pet-related and dog-friendly friends.

Adele and Sofia have even started travelling around Europe with their own dogs at the invite of dog-friendly hotels keen for Paco’s Place to create social media content for them – including recent trips to Italy, Austria, Spain, France and London.

“We recently did a collaboration with a hotel in Madrid and with Marriott and Sheraton hotels in London,” said Adele, who owns and runs two other businesses alongside Paco’s Place. “We are offered vehicles to use for our shoots and are invited to dog friendly events and festivals.

“Paco’s Place is our lifestyle and a passion as well as a business for us. It’s gradually becoming a brand and we will launch various branded products.”

The family set the business up seven years ago as they knew how difficult it was to find someone to care for their own Dachshunds.

“At that point I only knew about one other Dachshund hotel and I said to my husband that I’d always fancied running something like that. He just said let’s do it,” said Adele.

“We can have up to 10 dogs at any one time. They all have their own individual diets and eat at the time that suits them. We have some that don’t enjoy walks so when we take them out we have dog pushchairs as well as dogs on leads. We get a lot of attention.”

Adele has entered Paco’s Place into the Innovation and Small Business of the Year categories of University of Staffordshire Business Awards and she has entered the Alumni Business Person of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Year categories.