This chapter is a record of interviews with John Roberts, director of the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation, previously the director of elephants at the Anantara Golden Triangle Resort. The two major topics explored were, first, how John become interested in elephant welfare issues, and,...

This chapter details the development of elephant tourism in Thailand. Following a logging ban enacted by the government in 1989, in response to devastating floods and loss of life brought about by unsustainable logging practices, elephants used in logging and their mahouts suddenly found themselves ...

The COVID-19 pandemic had major and rapid consequences for tourism, ending almost all activity and causing immense problems for elephant tourism. This postscript provides an early review of the evolving situation. It looks at the effects of COVID-19 on international tourism and on elephant tourism...

This conclusion first summarizes the current and prevailing business models of elephant tourism by outlining the lessons learned about the supply and demand for such tourism, before moving on to consider the various pressures to comply with, but also break away from, many existing business models.

This chapter is a record of interviews with Chi Lo, sustainability and social responsibility specialist of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), and Senal Siriwardene, an experiential architect at Jetwing Hotels, about the position of their organization/company on elephants and tourism.

In this chapter, the authors position themselves as insider and outsider applying collaborative autoethnography to narrate their personal accounts of the elephant phenomenon in India. They also reflect on issues that have affected elephants in the interrelational world of human-elephant...

This chapter explores how tourists 'gaze' at elephants at camps in Chiangmai, Thailand. Developing John Urry's (1990) concept of the tourist 'gaze', this chapter explores and explains different behaviours and perceptions of tourists who visit elephant camps in Chiangmai, and how elephant camps and...

This chapter highlights the key welfare issues with regard to elephant attractions and presents the findings of a survey of tourists who have previously visited elephant attractions in Asia which aimed to find out more about their motivations, the activities they undertook, their experiences and...

This chapter discusses the results of a study concerning visitors' preferences and experiences at four major elephant tourism attractions in Sri Lanka. First, a detailed summary is provided of the current discourse on elephant tourism in this South Asian country, followed by a description of the...

The study presented in this chapter examines visitor experiences at elephant sanctuaries in an era where animal ethics has taken centre stage. The study unpacks the moral tensions surrounding such attractions through analysis of social media comments by visitors. Based on this study a framework is...