Club Med Says No More Elephant Rides, SeaWorld Tickets, and More After PETA France Plea

For Immediate Release:
July 19, 2021

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After learning from PETA France how animals used in tourist attractions suffer physically and psychologically, international travel provider Club Med has just released a new animal welfare guide and will stop promoting elephant rides, whale and dolphin exhibits, bullfights, and photo ops with animals. Taking effect this August, the policies also include a ban on fur in the company’s boutiques and recommendations for spay/neuter surgeries in countries with large homeless-animal populations. Advice is also included on avoiding pesticides in order to protect the environment for humans and all other sentient beings, even the smallest of animals with whom we share the planet.

“Unlike Club Med’s happy holidaymakers who travel the globe, animals used for entertainment never get to relax with their family or partners,” says PETA Foundation U.K. Vice President of International Programmes Mimi Bekhechi. “Club Med joins Airbnb, Tripadvisor, and Booking.com in urging people to amuse themselves without supporting animal suffering at SeaWorld, in ‘swim with dolphins’ programs, or in other cruel exhibits.”

In nature, orcas and other dolphins form complex relationships and travel dozens of miles every day—yet marine amusement parks cram them into concrete cells where they’re unable to feel ocean currents, enjoy life, or even swim more than a few yards in any direction for a lifetime. Big cats, monkeys, and parrots used for tourists’ selfies are typically confined to barren cages, and big cats are sometimes killed when they grow too large to manage. Elephants are trained by being beaten into submission.

Club Med joins a long list of companies—including United Airlines, British Airways Holidays, Virgin Holidays, WestJet, and JetBlue as well as many individual AAA clubs (such as Arizona; Colorado; Minneapolis; Northeast; Northern California, Nevada & Utah; and Washington)—that have stopped promoting SeaWorld and more than 50 travel companies that have pulled elephant rides.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com or follow PETA on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.