Today (Video): PETA Heckles TUI’s Chief Strategy Officer at World Travel Market London Event
Today (Video): PETA Heckles TUI’s Chief Strategy Officer at World Travel Market London Event
London – Earlier today, PETA supporters crashed the annual World Travel Market London event, where they commandeered the stage during TUI Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Executive Officer Holiday Experiences Peter Krueger’s speech and told attendees that TUI holds the dubious distinction of being the last major travel company to provide a financial lifeline to marine abusement parks. This is the latest action in PETA’s campaign calling on the travel provider to sever its ties with parks that hold orcas and other dolphins captive in the name of entertainment. Video footage of the disruption is available here.
“TUI is a disgrace for putting profit first and overlooking the pain, suffering, and premature death of highly intelligent marine mammals,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on the company to stop cashing in on animal abuse and end its shameful ticket sales to aquatic animal prisons now.”
PETA notes that while orcas in nature form complex relationships, work cooperatively to find food, and traverse up to 150 miles of ocean every day, those at marine parks are housed in incompatible groups in cramped tanks. Held in these concrete prisons for decades and forced to perform tricks for tourists, the majority die far short of their natural life expectancy.
Most leading travel companies, including rival Jet2holidays, have ended their promotion of dolphin prisons. TUI’s propping up of the notorious SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, and promotion of other marine parks, like Loro Parque in Tenerife, Spain, is an embarrassment to the entire travel industry. Over 202,000 PETA entity supporters have urged TUI to drop marine parks from its itineraries.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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