Thomas Cook boss: 'How I realised we needed to do more for animal welfare'

"London Zoo first opened its doors to the public in 1847, just six years after our founder Thomas Cook began his business.

This departure from its origins as a place of scientific study helped kick start the growth of animal attractions around the world, catering for those who want to experience wildlife up close.

However, just as customers’ expectations of holidays have changed from those early days, so have their expectations of the treatment of animals.

We know that the animal attractions we sell are an important part of the experience customers enjoy on holiday. But I also want to ensure that, in providing those attractions, we are living up to our promise to put our customers’ interests at the heart of all that we do.

That’s why Thomas Cook is today launching a new animal welfare policy – one that takes a much stronger approach to ensuring the welfare of animals in the attractions we sell and is, I believe, consistent with our customer promises of quality, service and reliability.

It became clear to me that we needed to act following an independent audit of animal attractions that I asked to be carried out earlier this year.

Animal welfare specialists Global Spirit audited a cross section of the attractions sold by Thomas Cook against the Abta Global Welfare Guidance for Animals in Tourism – widely accepted as the most stretching guidelines in the world.

Frankly, I was disappointed, not only with the lack of engagement from a number of suppliers, but also the findings of the audit.

Developed in partnership with Global Spirit and the international wildlife charity The Born Free Foundation, our new policy will require all animal attractions and outings sold by Thomas Cook to evidence full compliance with the Abta Global Guidance.

Put simply, if an attraction is found not to be fully compliant with the Abta Global Welfare Guidance for Animals in Tourism, Thomas Cook won’t sell it.

We know that for many people, animals in captivity of any form is unacceptable. However, it is a sad truth that many captive animals cannot be safely returned to the wild.

Tourism has a big role to play in raising standards for those animals during the transition to ending the practice of capturing animals for entertainment, and ending practices that are known to harm animals.

I am proud that Thomas Cook is taking the lead as the first travel business to enforce the Abta Global Guidance. We have listened to our customers, and we’re committed to conducting our business in a way that is consistent with our customers’ expectations of us.

To be truly successful, this needs to become an industry issue. We are committed to raising the profile of this issue and sharing the audits we do, working directly with Abta to enforce these guidelines, but also directly with our peers. Only by coming together will we improve standards at all animal attractions."