(Video courtesy of Peta).
Two protesters from Peta – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – took to the stage during a sustainability debate featuring the operator’s chief strategy officer and chief executive of holiday experiences, Peter Krueger.
The protesters held aloft signs reading: "Stop supporting orca abuse, drop marine parks."
Asked to address the protest, Krueger said: “This is something we’re constantly investigating. We’ve set ourselves high independent standards to review the providers we’re working with.”
However, Peta said Tui’s decision to continuing selling and promoting parks such as SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, and Loro Parque in Tenerife, was "an embarrassment to the entire travel industry".
"More than 202,000 Peta entity supporters have urged Tui to drop marine parks from its itineraries," the group added.
The incident followed publication of Tui’s new animal welfare policy in the UK, which will see it continue to sell attractions featuring captive cetaceans.
Tui is the only major UK operator to continue to sell these attractions after easyJet holidays removed them from its programme earlier this year following an update to its animal welfare policy. Jet2holidays followed suit a month later.
Despite the backlash it has faced in recent months, Tui’s new guidelines say: “As there are no current Abta guidelines for whales and dolphins in human care, we have recently updated our audits for venues with whales and dolphins.
"With the help of independent experts, we have developed new and stricter criteria for animal welfare based on the latest standards of the Marine Mammal Association (EAAM), the accreditations of zoos worldwide (EAZA, ZAA, WAZA) and the latest scientific articles.”
Tui said this ensured standards of nutrition, health, environment, behaviour and mental state.
It added: “Our audits prohibit, among other things, breeding for commercial purposes, the use of drugs to sedate animals, the capture of whales and dolphins in the wild and food deprivation techniques.”
Tui said attractions “will be regularly reviewed”, claiming: “This is how our new audit process improves the industry from the inside out.”
World Animal Protection, which has also lobbied against Tui, said the operator had made a number of “debatable claims”, including about the breeding of animals.
“We would argue that all breeding of whales and dolphins in venues sold by Tui will be for commercial purposes as they are all entertainment venues selling tickets to dolphin shows or swim-with interactions,” it said.
“We are curious how Tui Group intend to follow their own animal welfare policy and continue to sell captive cetacean entertainment venues.”
