Danes join Boycott of tiger temple

By The Nation
Published on July 11, 2008

One of the biggest Danish tour operators has boycotted Kanchanaburi’s famous Tiger Temple, due to its “highly dubious circumstances”, a Scandinavian travel trade magazine reported.
“It looked very reliable, and the Tiger Temple was a major attraction, but after a report from Care for the Wild International (CWI), we must take responsibility as a tour operator,” Billetkontoret sales manager Kasper Mydtikov was quoted as saying by Take Off recently.

Mydtikov was referring to an investigative report accusing the temple of providing poor facilities, handling its tigers roughly and being involved in the clandestine exchange of the felines with a tiger farm in Laos.

Take Off said many foreign tour operators had cancelled all visits to the temple and that Billetkontoret was the first Danish operator to do so.

Dubbed by tourists as the Tiger Temple, the Pa Luangta Maha Bua Yannasumpanno Forest Monastery has become a major attraction.

It has provided a home for tigers for years and was reported to the world via television documentaries on the Animal Planet and Discovery channels. Every year, tens of thousands of tourists from all over the world visit the temple. On busy days, visitor counts reach 700-800.

Temple representatives were not available for comment yesterday.

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