Exklusively for zoos.media – 2nd of March in 2021. Autor: Philipp J. Kroiss
Obviously, AVRN caved into more than questionable populism by radical animal rights activists and apparently doesn’t care about science and facts.
Netherlands: Why AVNR can’t be trusted any more
Travel is all about trust. When you work with a travel agency, you trust them a lot: they should bring you safely to the destination and help you to experience the best days of your year. It’s a problem when these organizations or associations cave into bad lobbyism. This happened with the General Dutch Association of Travel Companies (ANVR). This is an organization in the Netherlands that represents the interests of companies in the travel industry.
They were obviously allowing World Animal Protection, an untrustworthy organization constantly lying about conservation, zoos, aquariums, and dolphinariums, to fool them.
Why „FOOLED BY A SMILE“ by World Animal Protection is not trustworthy
AVNR believed obvious lies
The decision of AVNR that members won’t sell tours to accredited and certified dolphinariums contributing to conservation, education, and research showed that AVNR doesn’t care. They don’t care about the truth, they don’t care about facts, and they certainly don’t care about science because leading scientists disagree with misinformation spread by animal rights extremists like World Animal Protection.
Traveling has got a lot to do with security, especially these days, and this comes from evidence-based science. Every traveler now needs to fear that the next untrustworthy lobbyists use the obvious ignorance of AVNR to convince them to make the next wrong decision. Such associations can’t be trusted. So, for your next travel, you just can not rely on members of the AVNR.
No one needs AVNR’s approval to visit dolphins
Everyone can check accreditations and certifications of zoos and aquariums online easily and, at the same time, book their ticket – even if they would trust AVNR enough in terms of traveling, although they showed to be untrustworthy. So, this is only a problem for the local travel agents who got provision from selling tickets. No zoo, aquarium, or dolphinarium really expects to get disadvantages from this.
The problem is that travel agencies and associations could be part of the solution, not the problem when they would promote accredited and certified dolphinariums to destroy the business of the bad dolphinariums. AVNR chose to not be part of this solution and trust one of the leading fake news organizations on behalf of animal welfare.
What could AVNR do to regain trust?
In order to regain trust, AVNR could become part of the solution and support conservation, education, and research instead of fake animal activism of World Animal Protection. In addition, by doing this, ANVR would also support sustainable tourism! In this way, ANVR would also be a far-sighted pioneer in sustainable, nature-friendly and gentle tourism.
They could follow science by experts and not populism by animal rights extremists. In times of Covid-19, when travel agencies are at risk, this weakening of their own position and trust in themselves threatens the existence of AVNR’s members.
Caving into animal rights populism already destroyed Thomas Cook, massively harmed SeaWorld, and ridiculed TripAdvisor. So, it didn’t help them – especially in these challenging times – and more likely decreased their competence to survive crises. People, who truly love nature and animals, will observe whether members of the dysfunctional association itself will face the same fate that they surely would deserve if they continue to prefer populism to facts.
