Three travel companies remove elephant encounters from itineraries after PETA push

NORFOLK, VA. – After hearing from PETA about the abuse inflicted on captive elephants forced to “bathe” with tourists for photo ops, three major travel companies – Project Expedition, Journeys International, and Discover Corps – have dropped the exploitative elephant encounters from their booking sites. In thanks, PETA is sending the companies delicious vegan chocolates.

“We thank those travel companies that are refusing to promote egregiously cruel attractions where elephants are beaten into subservience and forced into selfie stunts instead of living their elephant lives,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA applauds these in-the-know travel companies for shunning shameful, animal-abusive tourist traps and urges the last remaining holdouts to follow suit.”

In nature, elephants live in matriarchal herds, protect one another, and share mothering responsibilities for the herds’ babies. But those exploited by the tourism industry are often stolen from their mothers as babies and beaten with nail-studded sticks or other weapons to break their spirits and make them fearful and submissive. Adults are kept chained and trainers constantly threaten them with bullhooks – weapons that resemble a fireplace poker with a sharp hook on one end—to force them to obey out of fear of punishment.

The extreme stress elephants endure in these conditions can lead them to exhibit abnormal behavior, including increased aggression, and dozens of deadly incidents have been reported involving captive elephants – most recently in January, when a Spanish tourist died while bathing with an elephant in Thailand.

Project Expedition, Journeys International, and Discover Corps join more than 50 other travel leaders – including Airbnb, Booking.com, Costco Travel, Expedia Group, and Royal Caribbean – in refusing to promote exploitative and dangerous elephant encounters. PETA is calling on SITA World Tours to follow suit.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness.

The article Three travel companies remove elephant encounters from itineraries after PETA push first appeared in TravelDailyNews International.