Wildlife-friendly pledge
Travel & tourism
The future of tourism is wildlife-friendly
Discover travel companies all over the world boldly committing to move away from selling and promoting cruel wildlife entertainment.
What is wildlife entertainment?
Wildlife entertainment includes keeping or using wild animals for activities that:
- risk portraying or trivialising them as pets, novelty objects, comedians, or domesticated species,
- encourage animals to perform behaviours that are either unnatural, unnecessary, or harmful,
- may risk replication of similar activities in harmful ways in other places,
- involve settings or procedures that may be considered stressful or harmful to all or individual animals,
- expose visitors or handlers to unnecessary risks of injury or disease,
- are commerce-driven beyond sustaining maintenance of the animals at facilities striving to phase-out captive wild animal keeping.
These companies have made a commitment
A commitment to move away from selling and promoting activities that use captive wild animals as entertainment such as riding or bathing elephants, taking a tiger selfie, walking with lions, or swimming with dolphins.
By working with World Animal Protection they are helping transition the travel industry towards a wildlife-friendly future.
World Animal Protection recognises that change can’t always happen overnight, but will hold companies to account if they are not fulfilling their commitments to phase out cruel wildlife entertainment.
If you travel with any of these companies and you were offered (at your own expense) wildlife entertainment activities, please make your complaint to the travel company directly, and report this to us via tourism@worldanimalprotection.org.
Each one of these companies:
- Believes tourism can be a force for good and can help keep wildlife wild. As a responsible travel company, we recognise the links between wildlife protection, human health, and a responsible and resilient travel industry.
- Understands the link between pandemics, like COVID-19, and wild animal exploitation, and that the relationship between tourism and wildlife needs to change for the good of people, world economies and animals.
- Recognises that building back the travel industry more resilient and more responsibly is vital. As we face unprecedented challenges and routes to recovery due to COVID-19, we want to be part of the solution for our business, our communities and for travellers.
- Understands that tourists love animals and want to experience them on holidays but are not aware that across the world hundreds of thousands of wild animals are held in captivity and subjected to mental and physical suffering and exploitation for experiences such as elephant rides, tiger selfies, walking with lions or swimming with dolphins.
As wildlife friendly, they pledge to:
- Review our product offers to determine if we are supplying anything where wild animals are being used anywhere primarily for entertainment.
- Create a time-bound plan to help protect wild animals by influencing significant changes in supplier practices and/or phasing-out wildlife entertainment from our promotions and offers.
- Adopt an animal welfare policy for our business and share this policy with customers and staff.
- Provide our customers, if possible, with responsible wildlife offers where animals in the wild, at genuine sanctuaries or wildlife-friendly settings have the freedom and ability to exhibit a wide range of natural behaviours and tourists can observe them from a safe and respectful distance.
- Promote responsible tourism amongst our customers to enable them to be wildlife-friendly travellers and advocates.
This list is not exhaustive and is regularly updated. Contact us at tourism@worldanimalprotection.org if you know, or are, a travel company that does not sell or promote wildlife entertainment; we would love to work with you and add you to our list of wildlife-friendly travel companies.
Below you will find the list of Travel Companies that adhere to the Wildlife-Friendly Pledge
Click the logos to visit their websites.
