Fodor’s Travel Condemns Elephant Rides After PETA Appeal

Company Updates Content to Reflect Global Move Away From Wildlife Tourism

For Immediate Release:
September 25, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

After being contacted by PETA and nearly 97,000 concerned members of the public, Fodor’s Travel has stopped recommending elephant rides and updated its content to provide information about the cruelty inherent in captive-elephant attractions.

“Fodor’s Travel has added its name to a long list of travel-industry players that have taken a stand against exploiting elephants for entertainment,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges travelers to do their part to shut down wildlife tourism by never riding or bathing an elephant, visiting pseudo-sanctuaries, or posing for photos with captive wild animals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—notes that elephants who are forced to give rides at tourist attractions are often forcibly separated from their mothers as infants, bound with ropes or chains, and gouged with nails or other sharp objects. Those who survive the barbaric training spend the rest of their lives lugging tourists around or performing tricks under the threat of being beaten with bullhooks (weapons resembling a fireplace poker with a metal hook on one end).

Fodor’s Travel joins scores of travel and guidebook companies—including Intrepid Travel, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, and TripAdvisor—in opposing elephant rides.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist view that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please visit PETA.org.