Stricter Guidelines on Elephant Tourism Put Thai Travel Agents in Quandary
Photo Credit: Animal and man at Elephant Nature Park, outside Chiang Mai, Thailand. The park rescues elephants and allows tourists to bathe and feed them, with all the money from visitors going into the project. Cedar, Flickr
Skift Take
The Association of British Travel Agents is recommending something that does not exist yet. Only a handful of 250 elephant camps in Thailand are observation-only, with many still offering rides and bathing with elephants. What’s an inbound travel agency to do? Where should the elephants go if everyone follows this suggestion, well-meaning as it is? The debate continues.
The Association of British Travel Agents revised its Animal Welfare Guidelines on Tuesday, including the biggest repercussion for Asia so far. That is a recommendation to ban elephant rides, and any tourist contact or feeding of elephants without a barrier, which means activities such as elephant bathing are out.
The association encourages travel companies to either not offer or move away from these practices, which it now deems “unacceptable” compared with “discouraged” previously when the guidelines were launched in 2013.
Thailand, in particular, is hardest hit, as it is home to three-quarters of tourist elephant camps in Southeast Asia, believed to be around 350 to 400, as reported by a Skift deep dive, The Complicated Business of Saving Elephant Tourism, published last week.
The UK travel body said the guidelines are part of its commitment to raise standards in animal welfare and its role to provide advice to members, which include more than 600 tour operators in t
