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Adapted tourism: a right of people

with disabilities.
Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow
Mar 28 · 5 min read

Photo by Nemanja .O. on Unsplash

Note: This article was first published in Spanish and can be found here.

People with disabilities have the right to enjoy tourist services and access
them on equal terms with the rest of the population.

Unfortunately, this is not true in a rather high percentage of occasions

because these services are not adapted to be used by everyone, nor do they
have easy access even from the moment of searching for a holiday
destination and hiring services from distance.

This reality is not only negative for the group of people with disabilities, but
also for tourist establishments and services that fail to take advantage of a
sector of the market that they could access if they really took it into account.

If we add to the foregoing the fact that Spain is one of the main tourist
destinations on the planet, there is still more evidence of the loss of
possible income due to not counting as customers with that group.

But, as I always say about this issue, beyond the untapped business
possibilities and breaches of rules and laws, not thinking about achieving
universal accessibility of transportation, access, accommodation, products
and services is something selfish since absolutely all of us at some point in
our lives can have a disability for whatever reason, whether it is mild or
severe, temporary or chronic, that does not allow us to enjoy them.

To that reason we must add that Spanish society will be in a few years of the
oldest in the world, which will make even more necessary the universality
of access to these services.

Barriers to tourism for people with

disabilities.
Generally, in the collective imagination, when you think about what
difficulties a person with a disability can have to access a service of any
kind, the first and almost only thing that comes to mind are the
architectural barriers.

This is true for a large number of people who do not think that there are
more types of disabilities than physical ones and that the difficulties go
beyond problems to physically access places.

But there are more barriers than those. Specifically, barriers can be divided
into environmental barriers and social barriers.

The first refers to infrastructures and built environments, including

information and technology, while the second refers to the training of
tourism companies, lack of awareness of accessibility, prejudice and
discrimination towards some user groups.

As we see, it is also very important when offering adapted services the

ignorance of the specific needs of the group and also the psychosocial
barriers that are created around said ignorance.

According to the extensive report “Observatory of universal accessibility of

tourism in Spain” published by the Fundación ONCE in 2016, there is also a
lack of reliable information on accessibility which is the most risky for
tourists.

Data on accessibility conditions are scarce and fragmentary, as are the

analyzes they address. In addition, existing ones show large disparities and,
consequently, very little coherence, geographic coverage, methods and
evaluation criteria used.

As a result, tourists do not receive coherent information or that allows them

to differentiate between services that compete with each other, which leads
to confusion and contrariety in the tourist experience when they visit the
destination.

The client with a disability should not be

underestimated by tourist businesses.
The Fundación ONCE report, based on surveys, discussion groups and
interviews of different types to people with disabilities, companions,
managers and tourism companies, provides us with a reflection of what are
the habits regarding tourism for people with special needs.

I will now simply present some data extracted from this study to draw
attention to the businessman who has not yet seen the possibility of
increasing business that would involve adapting his business or tourist
service to people with disabilities.

Although a priori one might think otherwise, there is no statistically

significant difference between the number of trips made in the last two
years by people with disabilities or special needs (7 average trips) and
people without special needs (8 average trips), so we can say that these
people travel with practically the same frequency as people without
special needs.

When choosing a tourist destination, half of the participants with special

needs point out the tourist interest of the destination and economic criteria
as key factors in the election, which coincides with the rest of the
respondents.

The difference, however, is detected in the third criterion that is most taken
into account when selecting the destination: “that is accessible and
adapted to my needs”.

The average expenditure per person made during a trip is higher among
those with special needs (€ 813.65) than among the rest of the population
(who spends on average € 637.60), which is a difference of 28%.

Are such data (the report has even more) not sufficiently succulent and
awake the initiative of the service and product providers to adapt them to
people with special needs? Well, it seems that not yet.

What do the providers of products and

services o!er to people with disabilities?
Apparently they do not offer what the group of disable people claims.

The study reveals that there is an important gap between supply and
demand of accessibility.

Specifically, 87% of the companies participating in the observatory declare

that among all its users, their establishment is attended by clients with
disabilities or special needs. However, 67% of companies and providers of
tourism services believe that the demands of this group has low or no
importance, while only 10% consider this demand very important for
their business.

This contradiction responds to a very limited and biased perception of

clients with disabilities, associated exclusively with very specific and visible
profiles (users of wheelchairs), when the range of tourists with special needs
that actually go to their businesses and establishments is very much wider
than they spontaneously recognize.

Almost 8 out of 10 companies and tourism providers declare to know the

legislation on accessibility that applies to their business or
establishment, compared to 23% who say they do not know it, which leaves
ample room for improvement among the latter (assuming that those who
say they know the legislation not only know it but apply it, which is perhaps
quite optimistic).

Among tourist establishments and services that have a public website for
clients and users, more than half say they have an accessible website
(53%), although 18% show ignorance to ensure the accessibility of their web
environments.

Only 3 out of 10 ensure that the personnel facing the public in their
establishment or service have specific training in dealing with clients
with disabilities and special needs, compared to 60% who state otherwise.

These are simply selected examples among the bulk of information in the
Fundación ONCE report, but we can find many other areas of improvement
not only in it but in other studies and data published on the web.

The available data are conclusive to affirm that people with disabilities and
special needs constitute a real and attractive market niche for companies
and providers of tourism services in Spain.

That actions to improve accessibility are carried out depends on factors of

various kinds (legislative, economic, awareness, etc.) and are far from
simple, fast, or cheap to implement, but the group of people with disability
deserves a treatment on equal terms with the rest of society, also in the
tourism sector.

Let us all, from our respective fields of action, put our grain of sand to
achieve it.

Accessibility Disability Tourism

Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability,
Reputation and Corporate Communication,and integration of people
with disabilities.

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