T4proIN– What about accessible tourism?

During those first four months of work, T4proIN partners analysed statistical data about tourism, disability and accessible tourism in order to have an overview about challenges and opportunities for accessible tourism for people with disabilities in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Spain. This activity was an important first step for this project that began in February 2022 because it could help also to understand best and worst practices in the countries involved.

For this purpose, the importance of international tourism for people with disabilities is examined, as well as three main areas explaining the needs for implementing better practices in accessible tourism for each country:

  • Legal framework in the surveyed countries related to disability rights;
  • Policy and legal provisions in place (disability organisations, accessible tourism and tourism organisations);
  • Conditions for access to tourism services.

Currently, about 10% of the world’s population has some kind of disability: pregnancy, allergies, hearing loss, blindness, neurodegenerative diseases… For people with disabilities, travelling to a chosen destination can be challenging due to the difficulty, cost and time of finding information on accessible services, checking luggage on the plane, booking a room that meets access needs and so on.

Accessible tourism aims to integrate and include people with disabilities and older people in the tourism sector and remove the challenges they face when planning their travel and visiting their chosen destination. Through activities in this sector, people with disabilities minimize the effects of their condition and they try to overcome some of their limitations and they promote their integration into society.

One of the key elements of disabled people travel is accessibility, which includes:

  • type of disability
  • tourist information
  • tourism development
  • convenient location

There can therefore be no accessible tourism without elements such as the transport system, tourist infrastructure, tourist attractions and tourist information.

Over the past decade, many EU Member States have enacted disability laws or anti-discrimination acts against persons with disabilities since the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. These include the countries involved in this project where many laws have been enacted that are unfortunately often not implemented. Partners’ states have also large tourism-related revenues and this is one of the reasons that led to the creation of this increasingly cohesive partnership.

This research work, consortium’s first activity, was very important in order to understand on which fronts the subsequent needs analysis should be carried out. Thanks to it, for example, partners understood that if managers want to pursue an enabling, inclusive approach to the provision of tourism products and services, they must be aware of the characteristics and needs of people with disabilities in order to provide quality and accessible services approaching in the same time tourists with disabilities in the same way they would any other user group.

To know more about the International tourism and disability importance, download the PDF file below.

To track progresses of the project, follow T4proIN on its new website or on its social media pages: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

 

Share This