Success: TripAdvisor Increases Animal Welfare Requirements

Target: Stephen Kaufer, CEO of TripAdvisor

Goal: Support the changes in TripAdvisor’s policies on selling tickets to animal attractions, which ensure that cruel animal performances and other forms of “entertainment” will no longer be sold.

TripAdvisor has announced that, effective immediately, it will stop selling tickets to “entertainment” experiences that force animals to perform for profit, and will hold the institutions it does advertise to more stringent animal welfare standards. Thanks in part to petitions like this one at ForceChange, TripAdvisor and its subsidiary Viator have updated and improved their policies to account for the variety of ways that interactions with tourists impact animals.

The new policies build on and improve the company’s 2016 animal welfare restrictions. Under this policy, in addition to not listing attractions that involve killing or allowing any kind of injury to come to animals, TripAdvisor will no longer list experiences in which captive animals are forced to perform any sort of demeaning entertainment or unnatural behaviors, including circus shows, wearing human clothes, or any other act that does not benefit the animal and forces the animal to be drugged, unnaturally trained, or otherwise exploited.

Any sort of tourist interaction with animals must also meet TripAdvisor’s strict regulations: educational and voluntourism programs are among the limited experiences found on the site that include interaction with animals. As Head of Industry Relations Sally Davey states, “Tourist activities have a huge impact on wild animals around the world, and while that impact can often be positive, such as helping to fund important conservation efforts, it can be negative too. We hope that by making it clearer which kinds of experiences we are willing to sell on TripAdvisor and which we are not, we can push suppliers to adopt better animal welfare practices in the experiences they offer.” Sign below to support this important victory for the protection of animals around the world.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Mr. Kaufer,

Thank you for TripAdvisor’s renewed commitment to ensuring the humane treatment of animals. As your company is demonstrating, the tourism industry is very influential when it comes to animal welfare, and the extension of your policies to include the variety of tourism experiences that exploit or take advantage of animals is a pivotal step in the right direction.

As your Head of Industry Relations says, “The changes we’ve announced reflect our ongoing commitment to help drive positive change within the tourism industry.” The exclusion of attractions that use exploitative practices, like forcing wild animals to perform, from TripAdvisor’s list will certainly forward that kind of positive change. I support this enhancement of TripAdvisor’s animal welfare policies.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Photo Credit: William Warby