TripAdvisor ends sale of cruel wildlife tourist attractions following World Animal Protection campaign
The world’s largest travel site, TripAdvisor today announced they will stop selling tickets to some of the cruelest
wildlife activities. This decision comes less than six months after World Animal Protection launched a petition urging
action – over 558,000 supporters across the world called upon TripAdvisor to stop profiting from the sale of tickets to
cruel wildlife tourist attractions.
This is the latest breakthrough for the charity’s Wildlife – Not Entertainers campaign. The charity first campaigned
against cruel wildlife entertainment in 1991 and has ended bear dancing in Greece, Turkey and India. Today’s
announcement by TripAdvisor is a significant step towards ending elephant rides, tiger selfies, swimming with dolphins
and other forms of cruel tourist entertainment.
World Animal Protection will join other animal welfare, conservation and tourism industry experts to work with
TripAdvisor as they launch a new education portal linked to every animal attraction listing on TripAdvisor. The portal
will educate millions of tourists about the cruelties wild animals face for tourism entertainment. According to an
independent polling commissioned by World Animal Protection, 85% per cent of people agreed that wild animals belong in
the and three quarters said it was wrong for people to make an income from using wild animals for entertainment if the
animals suffer.
One of the popular holiday activities TripAdvisor will stop selling tickets for are elephant rides, an activity World
Animal Protection has revealed to be one of the world’s cruellest forms of wildlife tourist entertainment. Baby
elephants are often taken from their mothers when young, beaten, and endure ongoing physical and psychological abuse
during training to make them submissive enough to spend the rest of their long lives chained and giving rides to
tourists.
Nicola Beynon, Campaigns Manager New Zealand at World Animal Protection says:
“We congratulate TripAdvisor on taking this important step towards ending the cruel wildlife tourism entertainment
industry – it’s also a great result for over half a million World Animal Protection supporters who took action with us
to stop the travel site from profiting on sales of elephant rides, tiger selfies and other cruel wildlife tourist
interactions.
“We’re happy to be a part of their new initiative to help raise awareness among TripAdvisor users about these abuses and
we will work with and continue to steer the company until all sales of cruel wildlife entertainment has been removed and
their users know about every cruel wildlife attraction. Once people know the truth about these wildlife abuses they will
choose to stay away because they love animals.”
Although TripAdvisor’s announcement today is significant, certain venues that involves cruel entertainment attractions
will still be bookable via TripAdvisor or its Viator brand. They say they will end the sale of specific experiences
where tourist have direct physical contact with captive wild animals or endangered species.
Nicola also adds: “We hope it will only be a matter of time before TripAdvisor will also come to realize that it has to
end sales to all cruel wildlife attractions such as SeaWorld where the animals endure a lifetime of abuse and highly
stressful training to perform. Until then we will provide the best education we can on TripAdvisor’s website to steer
people away from cruel venues like these.”
In order to bring an end to this suffering of animals for tourist entertainment, World Animal Protection has been
engaging with the travel industry globally seeking for them to commit to not send their customers to venues where they
can ride elephants, take selfies with tigers and lion cubs.
Over 100 global travel companies have already agreed to no longer offer visits to venues with elephant rides and shows
in any of their markets. Among these are popular brands from across the world, like Contiki, Kuoni Travel UK, Intrepid
and TUI.
ENDS