Launched in August 2016, Dolphin Freedom UK educates the public about the reality of the swim with dolphins experience that is widely available from travel agents on the UK high street. While there was a groundswell against the whale and dolphin capture industry, the travel companies are quietly peddling and profiting from the same industry with very little attention.
2016
AUG 15 – Dolphin Freedom UK launched, logo by Frank Duffy.
DEC 3 – #DROPTHEDOLPHINS hashtag launched.
DEC 7 – Reasons not to swim with dolphins leaflet designed by Spiral Pixel Design launched.
DEC 14 – Thomas Cook responds to mounting pressure with new animal welfare policy which offers no change for the animals.
DEC 23 – New leaflets designed by Spiral Pixel Design explaining how Thomas Cook, Thomson and other travel companies are ignoring grave welfare concerns for profit.
2017
JAN 15 – First #DROPTHEDOLPHINS Tweetstorm.
JAN 16 – Tweetstorm results – 23,000 tweets. 56,000 people directly engaged with tweets or #. Over 1 million people worldwide saw a tweet. Trended at No. 12 U.K. Thomas Cook responded once on Twitter.
JAN 19 – Published a summary report on the ABTA animal welfare guidelines and Thomas Cook’s ‘New Approach’ to animal welfare in tourism.
JAN 22 – Petition calling on Thomson to #DROPTHEDOLPHINS from their holiday package.
MAR 4 – Dolphin Freedom message designed by Spiral Pixel Design goes out in national newspaper! Large advert in Saturday national Guardian with 400,000+ readers across the U.K.
At a time when people are considering what to do for their summer holiday, this advert was of utmost importance and will have reached hundreds of thousands of people! Our anti-captivity message is crucial to the animals that languish in tanks in holiday hotspots all around the world. By reaching out directly to the public we can influence their choices and help them make ethical decisions considering the captive animals’ welfare and not only seeing them as a commodity of entertainment.
MAR 19 – Tweetstorm 2.
MAR 20 – The Sun online covers Tweetstorm.
APR 2 – Thomas Cook audit results published.
APR 2 – Al Jazeera picked up on our #DROPTHEDOLPHINS campaign in light of Thomas Cook’s announcement and gave us some air time for comment.
MAY 13 – Hosted Empty The Tanks, London.
“An excellent and effective day that saw around 150 – 200 people give out approx 4000 leaflets and Thomas Cook even took it upon themselves to close for most of the afternoon!”
JUNE 18 – Tweetstorm 3.
JULY 15 – SEPT 16 – Outreach outside Thomas Cook stores.
SEPT 22 – Featured in Captive Animals Protection Society magazine.
Tweetstorm results: Trended No.10 U.K, 28,500 tweets sent to Thomas Cook and ABTA after server crash! #DROPTHEDOLPHINS hashtag reached 1.7 million.
Our second tweetstorm proved even better than the first with hundreds of members of the public joining the action. Tweeting was slow going at first due to server problems but an impressive 7000 tweets were sent in the first 45 minutes. The social media frenzy was even noticed by The SUN, who wrote an article covering the tweetstorm bringing even more public attention than anticipated!
July 2017 saw the start of our outreach programme. Our first event was at Thomas Cook’s flagship shop in Marble Arch, Central London. We had an excellent turnout and distributed more than 1500 leaflets. Thousands of people will have seen our banner which clearly states “Thomas Cook #DropTheDolphins from your holidays” Perhaps most telling was the amount of support we got. Many people commented that they would never swim with dolphins and some people were interested in signing online petitions. Some people wanted to have conversations about cruelty concerns and were interested to learn how Thomas Cook was involved in creating the demand.
Our school outreach initiative launched in July with a very successful workshop at a school in London. We were so excited to deliver an interactive session on the terrible subjects of capture and captivity. It was interesting to hear what young people thought and an honour to teach them some life facts about cetaceans in the wild. They have enquiring minds and pertinent questions. It’s exciting to be reaching out to young people about the rights and welfare of captive animals. To discuss the issues with them and teach them about the issues connected to captivity is heartening.
2018
MAR 28 – Thomas Cook continue to profit from marine parks.
MAY 12 – Hosted Empty The Tanks, London.
JUNE 16 – Speech “Thomas Cook blog – No.1 thing to do in Miami – Miami Seaquarium”, read at ‘Stand Up For Lolita’, London.
JULY 29 – Thomas Cook stops SeaWorld sales.
JULY 31 – Lolita update – Dolphin Freedom received a reply from Thomas Cook stating that the blog will be “amended to remove reference to this attraction.
AUG 1 – Blog: Goodbye orcas, hello belugas.
AUG 7 – Thomas Cook to audit Atlantis Sanya. Press quoting Dolphin Freedom UK – Jing Travel, TTG Media, Travel Weekly.
SEP 30 – Tweetstorm #THOMASCOOKSHAME achieved a social media reach of 768,000+, over 16K tweets were sent in the evening alone. #ThomasCook trended at #88, #THOMASCOOKSHAME trended in the UK at No. 27.
OCT 27 – Article published in the Daily Mail Online.
NOV 9 – NOV 20 – Nationwide outreach events.
NOV 27 – Dolphin Freedom UK mentioned in the Daily Mail article, ‘Thomas Cook shares plunge by a THIRD.‘
Thomas Cook Atlantis Tweetstorm
After the shocking news that Thomas Cook has started a new contract with the hotel, Atlantis Sanya in China which has recently purchased captured Russian belugas and dolphins from Taiji. Dolphin Freedom UK along with hundreds of concerned people wrote to Thomas Cook asking them to explain how this new contract demonstrates improved animal welfare standards.
Nobody received a reply.
“Don’t you think this is pretty bad for a UK company? We get ignored by the dolphinarium industry of course. It’s well documented they have notoriously bad accountability and transparency. This is of course because they have something to hide. If they were open about what really goes on inside their marine animal prisons they’d lose all custom. However, for UK tour operator to behave the same way?! Pretty scandalous really. As the company demonstrates the same negative traits as the dolphinariums it becomes increasingly obvious how embedded Thomas Cook is with the marine captivity industry. To ignore customers only demonstrates a total lack of professionalism.”
– Dolphin Freedom UK
An article from Jing travel talks about Thomas Cook coming under criticism for supporting the Chinese dolphinarium market. “I hope people realise what exactly Thomas Cook are trying to do! They are hoping to make the Chinese dolphinarium market popular with the UK and European holidaymakers as the industry fades in the West, Thomas Cook will replace that Western $$££ for the Chinese Yuan. Thomas Cook isn’t planning to drop the revenue from dolphinariums as we close places like SW and Dolphin Discovery, they will hope to just replace it.”
Remember when Thomas Cook stated ‘we have taken steps to remove promotional content for all animal excursions, in line with our animal welfare policy. This includes adverts, social media promotional campaigns and blog content across our websites and social media channels.’ Well, it doesn’t seem to be happening! Thomas Cook China seem to think showing a captured Russian beluga whale choosing World Cup winners was hilarious! Moving from the west to set up in the east!
On September 30th at 8pm UK time, concerned people from all around the world tweeted to Thomas Cook. A sheet of 80 prepared tweets was compiled illustrating the cruelty involved in capturing cetaceans and holding them in captivity for human entertainment. They were sent out to – Thomas Cook, Thomas Cook Cares, Peter Fankhauser (Chief Executive Officer, Thomas Cook Group plc) & David Ville (Group Sustainability Manager at Thomas Cook Group).
The tweetstorm #ThomasCookShame achieved a social media reach of 768,000+. Over 16k tweets were sent in the evening alone. Thomas Cook trended at No. 88, #ThomasCookShame trended in the UK at No. 27.
“Some people think they have the right to go into the wild and brutally remove members of another species from their families and their homes and put them in a tank or a cage and starve them until they become broken and willing to obey. How is this acceptable in the UK in 2018? It is not! But UK tour companies are still getting away with promoting it abroad and have been getting rich off it for decades. Thomas Cook is still promoting dolphins and beluga whales which have been recently captured. You may ask yourself how have they managed to get away with it for so long? We wonder the same.” – Dolphin Freedom UK
2019
MARCH 22 – Thomas Cook announced plans to close 21 stores and cut back its retail workforce, with the loss of 320 jobs.
MAY 4 – Outreach and local protests at Thomas Cook Stores.
MAY 11 – Hosted Empty The Tanks, London with a special focus on Thomas Cook. Marching from Islington high street store to their headquarters in Aldersgate.
JUNE 22 – National march Peterborough, joined by Dolphin Project’s Ric & Helene O’Barry.
AUG 28 – Thomas Cook confirmed terms of a £900m rescue deal that will give the Chinese conglomerate Fosun control of its holiday business – but warned its shares may be pulled from the London stock market as a result.
AUG 30 – Thomas Cook’s share price fell from 7p on 28 Aug when the rescue package was announced to about 5.5p when trading closed on Thursday (29 Aug) before falling further to 5.15p at the close of play on Friday.
SEPT 13 – Thomas Cook Group is reportedly in talks to increase the size of a rescue package to £1 billion.
SEPT 15 – Civil Aviation Authority on alert for Thomas Cook collapse.
SEPT 16 – Stock market expert predicts Thomas Cook may go bust, share price currently at 4.68p.
SEPT 19 – Future of Thomas Cook is hanging in the balance as they scramble to raise an additional £200m to secure a rescue deal.
SEPT 22 – Thomas Cook boss Peter Fankhauser remains silent as he leaves a meeting with the firm’s biggest shareholder and creditors at a City law firm, as the struggling travel operator tries to piece together a rescue deal. – KPMG is being lined up to oversee the insolvency of Thomas Cook’s UK tour operating business.
SEPT 23 – 2 am THOMAS COOK CEASED TRADING
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