Victory! Carnival Corporation Cancels Elephant Encounters After PETA US Appeal
10 June 2025
Victory! Carnival Corporation Cancels Elephant Encounters After PETA US Appeal
London — After hearing from PETA US and over 40,000 of its supporters, Miami-based Carnival Corporation—the largest cruise line in the world—confirmed it no longer offers excursions to operations that force abused captive elephants to be ridden or bathed by visitors.
Carnival Corporation—which owns Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, and many others—joins more than 50 other travel leaders, including Tripadvisor, Airbnb, Booking.com, Costco Travel, Expedia Group, and Royal Caribbean, that have pledged not to offer exploitative and dangerous encounters with elephants, which can lead to attacks on their handlers and tourists. In thanks, PETA US is sending Carnival Corporation a box of delicious, elephant-shaped vegan chocolates.
“Kudos to Carnival Corporation for this compassionate move, which will help protect animals from exploitation and turn the tide against operations that beat and chain elephants,” says PETA’s Senior Corporate Projects Manager Dr Carys Bennett. “PETA encourages tourists to avoid all activities that abuse animals and choose kind travel companies like Carnival that keep elephant exploitation from their excursions.”
Elephants are highly social animals who live in matriarchal herds, protect one another, forage for fresh vegetation, play, bathe in rivers, and share mothering responsibilities for the herds’ babies. But those used for tourism are forcibly separated from their mothers as babies, immobilized with tightly bound ropes, and gouged with nail-studded sticks or other sharp objects to “break” them. As adults, as this PETA US video shows, they’re kept chained and constantly threatened with bullhooks—weapons that resemble a fireplace poker with a sharp hook on one end—to force them to obey out of fear of punishment.
While most UK companies have already ended these cruel experiences, PETA US is rallying its members and supporters to urge all travel companies to stop exploiting elephants. PETA entities are now urging the Tourism Authority of Thailand to ban all elephant rides at the country’s tourist sites.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”— points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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