Tripadvisor, Airbnb and Booking are putting a stop to animal mistreatment: they will no longer sell tickets for attractions that do not respect animals.
This is news that smells of victory. Thanks to the tireless work of Peta, the NGO that defends animal rights, review giant Tripadvisor, accommodation leader Airbnb and holiday search engine Booking have put a stop to animal mistreatment and taken the animals' side: from now on they will no longer sell tickets for attractions that do not have their welfare at heart.
Tripadvisor will no longer sell tickets for marine amusement parks and facilities that keep cetaceans in what are effectively aquarium tanks. "We have come to understand that dolphins and cetaceans cannot thrive in a tank. They are highly intelligent animals with complex needs, and their natural habitat cannot be replicated in a park," reads an announcement on their site. "We hope this will be the last generation to grow up in captivity."
"Once again they have shown themselves to be industry leaders," declared Peta vice president Tracey Remain. "Tripadvisor's ethical decision helps bring ever closer the day when these magnificent animals will no longer be kept in captivity and will be free to return to their home: the ocean."
But Tripadvisor's commitment to animal rights is not new. As far back as 2016, the review giant decided to stop selling tickets for attractions involving rides on elephants, photos with tiger cubs (and adults), or swimming with dolphins. Moreover, activities that cause suffering to animals for human entertainment have long been banned from their platform, such as bullfighting and canned hunting, where cubs are bred and raised specifically to be killed by sadistic paying tourists.
Airbnb also has animal rights at heart. In addition to the measures already taken, the platform's new guidelines have been announced, explicitly prohibiting all attractions that involve direct contact with animals, as a source of abuse and exploitation. All of this was achieved with the help of World Animal Protection (Wap), an international organisation dedicated to animal welfare. "Seeing an industry leader like Airbnb commit to making animal welfare a priority not only helps educate tourists on the importance of choosing cruelty-free activities, but above all encourages other companies to do the same," said Wap executive director Alesia Soltanpanah with delight.
Today, their site offers over a thousand animal-friendly activities in nearly sixty countries around the world. "Our goal is to offer users a new way of connecting with nature," said Brian Chesky, chief executive of Airbnb. In the past they had already banned attractions involving elephant rides, denouncing the abuse and extreme violence that arose from them. From now on, the ban extends to any attraction involving direct encounters with animals, including swimming with dolphins and photographs with tigers.
Booking has also put a stop to mistreatment in the name of tourism and has changed its policies. After working for months with Wap, in August of this year it published new animal welfare standards for experience partners, listing the five fundamental freedoms for animals that everyone is required to respect. These include the right to be properly fed, the right to enjoy an environment suited to their wellbeing and instincts, and the right to be free from pain, fear and psychological suffering.
In doing so, it has formally excluded all activities involving direct interactions with cetaceans, bears, big cats, sloths or orangutans; animal shows and performances, including circuses; animal fights of any kind; animal racing (from horses to dogs, to elephant polo); trophy hunting and sport fishing; excursions on the backs of wild animals; and visits to aquariums housing captive whales and dolphins.
In addition to prohibiting this type of offering on the site, they have also created a list of sustainable activities that tourists can check before booking.
Among the leaders of the tourism industry, Expedia is currently the one lagging furthest behind. The booking site remains in a grey area: in 2017, thanks to Peta's work, Expedia moved to declare its intention to increase communication and education for tourists on animal rights.
Initially it removed attractions involving contact with certain wild species, such as elephant rides.
However, a simple Google search is enough to reveal that the site still has tickets available for facilities that keep enormous cetaceans in tanks smaller than the space allocated for visitors' car parks, SeaWorld venues first among them.
In the case of attractions involving elephants or tigers, the animals are kidnapped as cubs and then beaten until their animal instinct is broken. The fate of cetaceans in marine parks is no better: animals that in the wild could live for over a hundred years do not survive more than fifteen in captivity. There are countless examples of self-harm by orcas and dolphins that, exhausted and depressed by their situation, deliberately throw themselves against the walls of their tanks, injuring their fins and teeth. Not to mention that interaction with human beings can cause serious psychological damage in certain species that are not naturally accustomed to contact.
Travelling and encountering animals — especially wild ones — can be an unforgettable experience, but now more than ever we need to stop and ask ourselves whether a holiday is truly worth so much suffering. As Stefano Mancuso, Italian plant neurobiologist and founder of the Laboratorio internazionale di neurobiologia vegetale, has also argued, we need to develop a new awareness of our interconnectedness, in order to understand once and for all how our consumption and our behaviour impact lives we know nothing about. Humans, animals and plant species live connected within a great web of life that ought to be organised according to a circular logic rather than a pyramidal one. It is therefore essential to understand that we must change our way of life and move from a linear economy — aimed exclusively at satisfying human needs — to an attitude in harmony with nature. And so, even when it comes to holidays, it becomes imperative to take a step back and look at the bigger picture: a holiday does not give anyone the right to abuse other living beings in the name of some notion of superiority.