Danish Tour Operator Boycotts Well Known Thai Tourist Attraction

By Bjarne Wildau

“The Tiger Temple” in Thailand is a major tourist attraction, but the story behind the project are based on lies. The animals are imported to Thailand under the “highly dubious circumstances” – That’s why the biggest Danish tour operator Billetkontoret now boycott tiger temple, writes Take Off.

This week, the tour operator was strongly encouraged to stop several visits to “The Tiger Temple” in Kachanburi, close to the River Kwai – northwest of Bangkok.
The advice to boycott the attraction came from Billetkontorets agent in Thailand – the cause was an in-depth report by Care for the Wild International (CWI), which in two years has researched “The Tiger Temple” and followed the daily routines.

The report indicates that the original story of the wild tigers has been raised and domesticated among monks, in fact, covers the illegal import of the animals from Laos under extremely dubious circumstances.

In light of this report, many foreign tour operators and tour operators with immediate effect cancelled all visits to the tiger temple. Billetkontoret follow this boycott as the first Danish tour operator.

“Who does not want to pat a tiger? The Tiger Temple is the story of a monk who took care of one tiger, and then one more, and so on. The “Tiger Temple” was famous, because the Animal Planet made a television programme about it. It looked very reliable and The Tiger Temple was a major attraction – but after the report from the CWI, we must take responsibility as a tour operator. That’s why we have chosen to remove The tiger temple from our program in Thailand, “says Billetkontorets sales manager, Kasper Mydtskov to Take Off.

Created 2008-07-07

Original news source: http://www.takeoff.dk/news.cfm?nNewsWeekly=1&nNewsId=17095

http://www.scandasia.com/viewNews.php?coun_code=dk&news_id=4474