Expedia Group and other travel companies profiting from captive dolphin cruelty

Expedia Group – along with its subsidiaries Wotif, Lastminute and Hotels – is one of Australia’s biggest travel brands. Yet they continue to support Sea World, selling tickets and promoting the venue.

In Australia, popular brands like Flight Centre, Qantas, Virgin Airlines and Helloworld Travel also continue to sell tickets to Sea World. We’re calling on all of them to stop.

The tide is turning on captive dolphin venues, and travel companies who continue to profit from their cruelty risk getting caught in the wash.

Ben Pearson, World Animal Protection’s Head of Campaigns, Australia said:

“Dolphin entertainment is animal cruelty masquerading as wholesome family fun. These highly intelligent and sociable wild animals are imprisoned for up to 50 years in small, barren, chlorinated pools.

“For a wild animal, like dolphins at Sea World, a life spent in a tank is not a life, it’s a life sentence.”

Recent achievements for dolphin

• Dolphin Marine Conservation Park has announced in March 2019 it will no longer breed dolphins and is working with us, and Action for Dolphins, to develop a sea sanctuary for the four dolphins left at that venue.
• In the past few months, Virgin Holidays, British Airways, Bookings.com and Trip Advisor have all shown leadership and have cut ties with captive dolphin venues, declaring they would no longer sell tickets or promote them.
• And more than 22,000 people from Australia and New Zealand have signed our petition calling on the Queensland Government to ban captive breeding at Sea World.

Unfinished business

Image Credit: World Animal Protection / Dean Sewell

But despite this progress, Sea World and the Queensland Government are standing firm on profiting from, and supporting, cruelty to dolphins.

Sea World has refused to meet with us or to even discuss the completely reasonable request to stop breeding a new generation of dolphins.

Similarly, the Queensland Government has declined to meet us to talk about what happens to the dolphins at Sea World when rapidly changing public attitudes render its captive dolphin activities unviable.

“That’s why we’re calling on Expedia, and the remaining travel companies still lagging behind, to end the sale of tickets to dolphin shows so that we can end their suffering once and for all.”  

– Ben Pearson, Head of Campaigns, World Animal Protection, Australia

Call on Expedia Group to end the promotion of venues that use dolphins for entertainment, so that we can ensure this is the last generation of dolphins in captivity. 

(Header Image Credit: World Animal Protection / Dean Sewell)

The tide is turning on captive dolphin venues, and travel companies who continue to profit from their cruelty risk getting caught in the wash