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Description
Since the 1989 ban on logging in Thailand, the domesticated elephant population, as well as their owners and mahouts, have come to heavily rely on elephant-based tourism as a means to make a living. Present day Thailand is known as the epicenter of elephant tourism and visitors come from all over to world to experience, interact, and observe them in a variety of environments. Currently, there are two major models of elephant tourism: the entertainment and the sanctuary models. Entertainment-based elephant tourism often provides visitors with opportunities to ride, bathe, or watch the elephants in shows. The sanctuary model focuses more so on observation of elephants in a natural setting. Sanctuaries have been recorded to provide more ethical treatment of elephants, in addition to working with local communities in their given region. While the entertainment model is the more traditional form of elephant tourism in Thailand, within the past decade the sanctuary model has been experiencing success and growth throughout Thailand. Existing literature has not specifically explored this phenomenon but has suggested that higher levels of visitor satisfaction may be reported at sanctuary-based experiences (Flower et al 2021; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2009). In addition to observing higher levels of visitor satisfaction, there have been calls for a more integrated examination of community and animal-based tourism (Giampiccolo et al 2020). Utilizing Giampiccolo and colleagues proposed community-based tourism-animal framework (2020), this research explored the influence that community-elephant relationships had on visitor decision, experience, and ultimately satisfaction at a community based elephant sanctuary located in Northern Thailand. Using the case study of Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary (KSES), a mixed methods survey and explanatory interviews the research question, Do community-elephant interactions and/or relationships influence tourists' experience and satisfaction at community-based elephant sanctuaries? And if so, to what extent?, was explored. The results suggest that visitors are more likely to choose an elephant sanctuary based on their ethical treatment of elephants. However, findings also suggest that positive interactions between all the stakeholders at KSES, both human and non-human alike, had the most substantial impact on experience and satisfaction.
