Tourism businesses all experience daily challenges, such as the pressure of clients wanting to book activities that may not align with your business ethics. Wildlife-visitor activities, or rather the close interaction between visitors and wildlife, whether captive or free-roaming, has been a contentious topic for many years that often divides our tourism sector. You may also find it difficult to explain to your clients why you don’t sell elephant riding or feeding, or interactions with captive predators.
This webinar will endeavour to give you well-balanced and researched reasons why you should avoid selling certain wildlife-visitor activities and what you should rather be promoting. For example, we will explore why selling cub petting is unacceptable in our current tourism landscape, where sustainable tourism practices are becoming the norm and a growing body of scientific evidence proofs that animals are sentient beings. We will provide in-depth researched rationale based on Mellor’s Five Domains animal welfare model and the SATSA guidelines and decision-making tool for evaluating captive wildlife attractions and activities.
