What’s wrong with this picture?

WHEN a resort in Thailand posted a photo on Facebook of what it believed was an “amazing Sunday brunch”, it never expected just how much attention it would end up attracting.

Almost instantly, Nikki Beach Resort in Phuket was flooded with complaints over the photo, which shows drunk revellers riding a baby elephant near the pool.

There was outrage over the fact that such a young elephant had been brought onto the property so that guests could ride it for fun. Those who took part in the activity were also slammed.

The resort, which is popular with clubbers, quickly deleted the photo, but the anger continued to pour in so it addressed the issue by posting this statement to its Facebook page:

“Elephants are a highly respected and regarded symbol of Thailand. As a global company, Nikki Beach respects every country’s culture and traditions and as such, we fall into the normal behaviours in usage of elephants to represent their culture. We never intended to be disrespectful and/or offend anyone.”

But instead of calming the situation, the anger spilt over onto the company’s TripAdvisor page. TripAdvisor decided to remove the reviews critical of the elephant incident, as the resort has been praised generally until this incident.

“Our guidelines state that reviews must relate to a genuine customer experience, and if we find evidence that reviews breach these guidelines we will remove them,” a TripAdvisor spokesperson told Tnooz.com. “If owners are concerned about a review, they can report it to us and we will investigate.”

At least some good has come of it all — the resort told news.com.au it will no longer allow elephants to be ridden on its premises.

“We would like to make it clear that we do not, have not and will never own an elephant. The elephant in the photo is from a reputable elephant caretaker who has no affiliation with Nikki Beach,” Nikki Beach spokeswoman Julie Fogel said.

“With the above said, we understand that this has upset many of our customers and animal advocates around the world, so effective immediately, we will stop granting the requests for elephants at Nikki Beach Phuket.

“The Nikki Beach family will never stand for the mistreatment of animals.”

It’s now one of many companies questioning the ethics of riding elephants for entertainment. A prime example is high profile tour company Intrepid Travel, which last May announced its refusal to take part in such acts.

In a statement on its website, Intrepid Travel said: “People often think that an elephant in captivity is domesticated, and so somehow it’s OK to have them under human command. But the reality is that they never have been domesticated like dogs or horses.

“Even if born in captivity, they are still a wild animal, and need to be ‘broken’ to accept human control. There is much evidence that this process is exceptionally cruel.”

“Yes, there are a considerable number of elephants that have been rescued from working in industries like logging and their carers need to earn a living to feed and care for them. But we’ve also learnt that the numbers of elephants being poached from the wild has increased to fuel the tourism demand for rides and entertainment ... So at Intrepid we took a stance over two years ago and began to phase out venues of concern and elephant rides.”

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.