Victory! Jet2holidays to Stop Selling Tickets to Marine Parks

London – Following nearly two years of tireless campaigning from PETA, which included demonstrations at annual meetings and across the country; more than 100,000 protest letters from compassionate members of the public, scientists, conservationists, and organisations which specialise in cetacean welfare; and support from celebrities such as Morrissey, Faye Winter, Olivia Bowen, and Belle Hassan, leading travel provider Jet2holidays announced that it will stop selling tickets to marine parks – venues that confine highly intelligent orcas and other dolphins and whales in the name of entertainment.

“Jet2holidays made the right call to cut ties with parks that confine orcas and other dolphins to concrete tanks that are to them the size of bathtubs and force them to perform circus-like stunts for human entertainment,” says PETA Vice President of Programmes Elisa Allen. “All eyes are now on TUI, which must follow Jet2holidays’ lead and immediately end the financial lifeline it gives these cruel abusement parks.”

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 concrete tanks for decades and forced to perform tricks for tourists, the majority die far short of their natural life expectancy. At Loro Parque in Tenerife, a venue which Jet2holidays included in its package holidays, three orcas died prematurely within a two-year period, including Ula, who was just two years old.

Earlier this month, easyJet holidays announced that it will not promote or sell tickets to any attraction or tourist activity where animals are exploited. Most leading companies, including Expedia, Thomas Cook, British Airways Holidays, Virgin Atlantic Holidays, and Club Med, have long since ended the promotion of dolphin prisons. TUI’s propping up of the notorious SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, is an embarrassment to the entire travel industry.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – 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:

Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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