If interest in ethical travel is growing, why are animals still being exploited for entertainment?
Despite growing interest in ethical tourism experiences, millions of wild animals are still captured and forced into brutal entertainment attractions to satisfy tourist demand.
Visitors take selfies with an elephant at a zoo in Germany. Germany, 2016. (Jo-Anne McArthur/Born Free Foundation/We Animals)
Last September, I found myself scuttling behind a wildlife guide as she took us around to see the herd of elephants that her facility, one of the few ethical sanctuaries in Thailand, houses. I’m juggling my camera gear, taking hurried photos of the area as she reminds me to stay close behind. Not because we might get lost, though not impossible across the facility’s 85 acres, but because the elephants here roam freely and, owing in part to their experiences of being forced to serve the whims of humans and a lot to the fact that they are wild animals, may feel inclined to attack.
Under rows of palm oil trees, barely obstructing the searing rays of the sun, we cautiously approached one. Asian elephants, of course, native to the region, are smaller than African elephants, I’m told, but this sizable creature was no less enormous. She is 42, and her name is Lao Thong Chaba, or just “Chaba”. Chaba frequently kicks one of her back legs behind her, leaving it folded at the knee. An injury she acquired from her time hauling humans on her back at an entertainment venue.
“She has a bad leg. And on the other side, between the eye and the ear, she has a lump on her. That’s from lying down and sleeping for a long time,” Por, our guide, said. “Elephants normally sleep for five hours per day. For Chaba, it’s more than ten because of the bad leg.”
We’re led to another. Jahn Lek, or “Little Moon”, 50, is smaller with fine tufts of hair on the top of her head. “She had a broken hip before she came here, from riding,” she said. “She had to stay in the hospital for two months to fix her hip.”
Elephants cannot lie down while receiving medical treatment, Por explained. So Little Moon spent those two months in the hospital standing almost entirely while receiving very invasive treatment for a pain so debilitating that it may not have completely gone away. Because of the injury, she was finally forced to “retire” from the labour and tourism industry. “She can’t do the riding or work anymore. She’s happy now,” Por said.
We looked on from meters away as Por told us about Chaba’s particular dietary regimen. She survives on daily smoothies prepared by sanctuary staff after losing the ability to chew solid food, a consequence of the poor conditions and chronic malnutrition she endured at the hands of her previous owners — circumstances not uncommon for captive elephants that are used for entertainment and labour.
We come to a stop in front of another, its body marked by a few scars and an injured tail, the result of years of fighting and aggression towards other elephants.
And another, who had arrived three weeks earlier from a theme park in Phuket. At this popular attraction, animals including elephants and tigers are forced to perform in elaborate shows, where they perform stunts, contorting their bodies into unnatural positions, under strobe lights and loud music, in front of the thousands of tourists who visit the attraction every month.
Female elephants socializing at an elephant sanctuary located in Krabi, Thailand in 2025. (Photograph: Shantal Otchere)
The ailments and behavioural issues experienced by many of the elephants at the Following Giants sanctuary are the physical and emotional scars wrought by life in captivity, in which a reported one-third of all Asian elephants are currently held.
According to a recent investigation by World Animal Protection, most captive animals, particularly elephants used in animal attractions, continue to endure poor living conditions, severe abuse and neglect and routine deprivation, all to ensure tourists can pose with them on their vacation.
A common practice used to control and “train” elephants from the time they are young is called the ‘phajaan’ or ‘the crush’. This well-documented and widely condemned practice takes elephants captured from the wild — commonly taken from their mothers as calves and violently separated from their herds — where they are subjected to systematic abuse involving being chained in cages so small they can’t move, turn around, or even lie down for long stretches of time, sometimes for as long as several weeks. Access to food and water is restricted, their trunks restrained and handlers – spending a lot of that time sitting on their backs to force them to get used to this practice – will often use hooks or even fire to stab, beat or terrify baby elephants into submission.
The crush is how elephants are trained so that tourists can ride, feed, bathe or even touch them at tourist attractions. And the growing demand for visits and photo opportunities with wild animals, elephants among the most common in Asia, fuels this practice.
“Elephants are very clever animals; they’re very sophisticated. And training them with a knife in the neck is a very harsh training method,” said Dr. Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at the University of Cambridge. “They can have traumatic experiences, much like humans do in deeply distressing situations, and those experiences can cause long-term negative consequences,” he said in a Zoom interview.
Dr. Broom explained how elephants used in tourism are often subjected to harsh training and management methods throughout their life, designed to establish control over animals powerful enough to seriously injure humans. “The way that is done almost universally is by sticking a knife in the neck of the elephant,” he said, describing the use of sharp implements, like ankushas or bull hooks, to punish and control them.
A mahout controls his young Asian elephant calf with a bull hook at the Surin Elephant Festival, Surin, Thailand. Thailand, 2011. (Adam Oswell / We Animals)
Demands from a growing cohort of conscientious travellers seeking “ethical” travel and animal experiences, as well as a growing concern about the treatment of animals in tourism exhibitions, appear to be making small ripples in global tourism. In 2023, the over-a-century-old Ringling Bros. Circus followed the lead of Circus Vargas in California and Cirque du Soleil by removing animals from its productions. And in January, the Indonesian government announced their move to ban elephant rides nationwide.
But attitudes are not changing fast enough. Last year, over 19 million international tourists arrived in Thailand, many seeking to recreate the animal rides or baths they saw on social media, with visits to wildlife attractions estimated to account for 20-40% of global tourism.
Animal attraction operators are also privy to the changing tastes of tourists. What were once tiger ‘kingdoms’ or elephant ‘villages’ are now ‘reserves,’ ‘sanctuaries,’ or ‘rescue centers.’ And across many parts of Thailand, it is nearly impossible to turn a corner without encountering advertisements encouraging tourists to visit venues where they can bathe with and feed wild animals.
“It is not the label [of the facility] that matters but the actions [toward the animals],” said researcher Neil Carr in an email exchange.
Carr is a tourism scholar and author who has written widely on the experiences of animals in entertainment attractions, and has examined what drives our choices as travellers. Like any business, he explained, animal attraction operators will often rebrand their operations to appeal to travellers, whether by changing their names or by making misleading claims about the well-being of animals in their care. The responsibility is on tourists to spot the signs of a genuine sanctuary rather than a tourist trap.
“As with greenwashing, labels are used to make claims that may be less than fully true but are nevertheless appealing to tourists and the public. This requires tourists to be able to determine for themselves if what they are seeing really is animal welfare,” he said.
Social media can also contribute to the promotion of wildlife attractions as harmless and highly sought-after experiences. Posts shared by influencers who have done little research into local practices, venues or the living conditions of the animals they interact with show their followers — some boasting follower counts in the millions — images of themselves smiling as they hand fruit to animals or pose with or upon wildlife.
As long as elephant rides and shows remain popular, elephants will continue to be taken from the wild to feed tourist demand. This has contributed to the rapid decline of the elephant species on the continent. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are only about 35 to 40 thousand Asian elephants left in the world, 15 thousand of which are in captivity. In Thailand, the numbers are even more stark. Recent estimates report no more than around 3,000 elephants left in the wild and nearly just as many captive.
Tourists riding an elephant at an elephant riding tourist attraction in Laos. Laos, 2008. (Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals)
Complicating matters further, while the end is simple: the need to slow the demand for animal attractions to a halt, the means is not.
As an economic boon, tourism accounts for 12 percent of Thailand’s GDP — elephant attractions alone generate between US$581.3 and US$770.6 million annually — in which over four million people in the region are employed; both participation in and withdrawal from animal-based attractions can carry consequences, including for local communities who rely on tourism dollars and for the animals in their care.
When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world in 2020, efforts to contain the rapidly spreading virus prompted business closures and shelter-in-place protocols. That February, tourism in Thailand fell by 44 percent.
With tourism revenue slashed by nearly half, many elephant owners could no longer afford the basic food and care their animals needed. Estimates for the cost of care and feeding elephants vary, but for an animal that can eat up to 300 pounds of food a day, expenses are high, and animal caretakers’ salaries can be just as costly. Animals went hungry, their quality of care declined and locals, who also benefit from tourist spending, also suffered. Showing that change isn’t as simple as telling a country to overhaul its tourism industry. What we often treat as purely “local culture” is, in reality, shaped by what visitors want, and the answer isn’t as simple as shutting tourism sites down altogether.
The tourists who flood through Thai airports in the millions each year bring with them the buying power that can accelerate and reshape how industries operate. It is this power that sustains cruel practices and keeps animals, some as complex and highly intelligent as elephants, dolphins and whales, mired in a cycle of abuse and torture for our entertainment. But with this power, we can also help drive positive change, including spending your dollars at facilities with a demonstrated commitment to properly caring for individual animals and avoiding operations that rely on a steady stream of trafficked animals, breed wild animals, or engage in exploitation.
“Humans are having a lot of negative impacts on other species in the world. That would apply to all aspects of tourism as well,” said Dr. Broom. As many of these harms are driven by tourism, Broom suggested travellers think carefully about the choices they make. “What are all the consequences of taking this kind of holiday or going to visit this kind of place? The more information [people have], the better.”
In practice, that means doing your research. Look up the places and facilities you intend to visit before you book to ensure you are well informed about practices and alternatives to facilities in which animals are subject to mistreatment and abuse. In March, World Animal Protection published this helpful guide with tips on how to ensure the wellbeing of wildlife when you travel.
Like the millions of tourists who pass through Thailand each year, I wanted to see its wildlife, but, along with the growing number of conscientious travellers who now weigh their desire for meaningful experiences against impacts and local realities, I also wanted to do so ethically. Finding a genuinely ethical wildlife venue in Thailand, like anywhere else, requires some effort. The search for the sanctuary I visited in Krabi, a popular beach town in Thailand’s southern region, began weeks before my arrival. I sifted through articles from wildlife advocacy groups, read traveller reviews and operator websites, and came across many venues advertising themselves as “sanctuaries” or “rescue centers” that offer bathing, riding or close interactions with animals.
Interest in ethical travel experiences may be rising, but animal entertainment shows no signs of disappearing, and policies and regulations are still slow to respond. Across Thailand, a major hub for animal entertainment attractions, from the moment you arrive, like me, in cities including Krabi until you disembark from your flight outside of the continent, tourists are bombarded with advertisements offering opportunities to interact with animals who are bred or sold for entertainment. The push for greater oversight and animal welfare protections, it seems, will have to come from us.
While so-called ethical attractions are often sought out by well-intentioned travellers, Carr argues that the label itself is vague and says little about how animals are actually treated. Judging a venue by the word alone does not mean its practices support animal welfare. Instead, he encourages travellers to look beyond marketing and consider whether animals are able to express their natural behaviours and have their welfare needs met.
“Maybe instead of “ethical”, let us think of places which do not leave animal wellbeing in a poor second — or worse,” said Carr. “If we are thinking welfare first, then it is about ensuring animals are able to display all their normal behaviour in as unconstrained a manner as possible, and that exploitation of that is minimised.”
What might an elephant’s life in an animal attraction with minimized exploitation look like? According to some animal-welfare researchers, it would include the ability for individual elephants to socialize freely or choose to spend time alone; food dispersed in ways that encourage natural foraging and grazing, rather than a restricted diet of fruit; access to mud and dust baths whenever they choose; natural mating and birthing rituals; water pools for swimming and drinking; and, crucially, autonomy. If you can ride, bathe, or otherwise touch and closely interact with a wild animal, that is a clear indication that the venue is unethical and prioritizing tourist demand over the animals’ well-being.
Because the fact of the matter is that whether the experience involves riding an elephant or simply feeding one, the abusive training they undergo to tolerate these often stressful encounters is the same.
The Following Giants Sanctuary isn’t just a tourist attraction, not anymore. It is also one of the few genuine ethical sanctuaries where the welfare of the elephants is supported and prioritized. You cannot touch, ride, or feed the elephants here.
The sanctuary cares for more than 20 elephants across two locations in Krabi and Koh Lanta and is certified by World Animal Protection, which prohibits breeding, riding, and direct contact between visitors and elephants. Experts say ethical facilities share these common standards: limited visitor interaction, appropriate care, and transparency, standards that groups like World Animal Protection consider for their certifications.
Like the approximately 2,800 elephants still used in tourism across Thailand today, all of the elephants at the Following Giants Sanctuary have spent most of their lives suffering abuse and torture. Many, like Chaba, now live with painful deformities or broken limbs. Unlike their peers, however, the elephants living in ‘retirement’ at the sanctuary are free — free to roam the grounds, socialize, and be free from the stressful, body- and spirit‑breaking work that defines the daily lives of an estimated 14,930 to 15,130 of Asia’s remaining captive elephants.
If we choose differently, this could be the last generation of captive elephants and the beginning of a future where elephants live only in the wild, roaming with their herds where they truly belong.