Victory! Ann Arbor Travel Company Jettisons Elephant Encounters After PETA Appeal

For Immediate Release:
May 5, 2025

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7381

Ann Arbor, Mich. –

Following discussions with PETA, locally based travel company Journeys International has stopped offering excursions to operations that force captive elephants, who have been subjected to years of abuse that can lead to attacks on their handlers or tourists, to be “bathed” by visitors seeking selfies. Journeys International, which had previously banned promotions of elephant rides, joins dozens of other travel leaders, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Costco Travel, Expedia Group, and Royal Caribbean, that have pledged not to recommend exploitative and dangerous elephant encounters in their itineraries.

“Savvy travelers know that every selfie with a captive elephant shows an unwilling animal who was beaten into submission for a tacky photo op,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA encourages tourists to choose kind travel companies like Journeys International that keep elephant exploitation off their itineraries.”

*Elephants at Chobe National Park in Botswana.*

Elephants are highly social animals who live in matriarchal herds, protect one another, forage for fresh vegetation, play, bathe in rivers, and share mothering responsibilities for the herds’ babies. But those used for tourism are forcibly separated from their mothers as babies, immobilized with tightly bound ropes, and gouged with nail-studded sticks or other sharp objects to “break” them. As adults, as this PETA video shows, they’re kept chained and constantly threatened 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.

PETA contacted Journeys International in January after a Spanish tourist died while bathing with an elephant in Thailand, and urged the company to stop offering these dangerous experiences that put elephants and humans in danger.

While most companies have already ended these cruel experiences, PETA is rallying its members and supporters to urge all travel companies to stop exploiting elephants for profit, including SITA World Tours.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.