Tourism constraints for people with disabilities - includes bibliography

Picture this: You and your family finally get away for that long-awaited vacation. Upon boarding the plane, you find out you can't use the restroom. At the conclusion of the four-hour flight, you discover that your luggage has been lost. After the hour wait for the airline staff to locate your stuff, you hail a cab, only to discover that the cabby won't load your baggage in the trunk. Upon making other arrangements for special transportation to the hotel (another hour's wait), you find that you cannot get into your bathroom or use the telephone.

Some vacation, huh? For many travelers with disabilities, this situation is a familiar one. Wheelchairs are lost or broken in airplane baggage compartments, public transportation is difficult and often not accommodating, and hotel rooms do not always meet accessibility codes. Even in 1998, many barriers to travel still exist for persons with disabilities, requiring great skill and patience on the part of the traveler.

Tourism is the word's largest growth industry, and it's showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Receipts from international tourism have increased by an average of nine percent annually for the past 16 years. During that same period, international arrivals rose by a yearly average of 4.6 percent to reach 594 million in 1996. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) forecasts that international arrivals will reach one billion by 2010. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation's American Travel Survey (1996), approximately 776 million people engaged in pleasure travel in the United States.

Many of these travelers have a disability, illness, or limitation that may hinder one or more life functions. In 1994, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that some 54 million Americans were covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990; this constitutes nearly 21 percent of the U.S. population.

In examining leisure in general, McGuire (1984) differentiated between barriers and constraints. Constraints were viewed as factors that preclude or reduce an individual's frequency, rate, or satisfaction as a participant in an activity. Crawford and Godbey (1987) classified leisure constraints into three categories: (a) intrapersonal; (b) interpersonal; and (c) structural. Intrapersonal constraints include lack of self-confidence, lack of encouragement, or lack of information about opportunities for leisure that affect preference or lead to a lack of interest in a particular type of leisure activity. Interpersonal factors are those associated with other individuals, including lack of leisure partners or lack of social interaction skills. Structural barriers are those that exist between individual preferences and participation in a leisure activity, including lack of finances, lack of transportation, limited abilities, lack of time, or architectural barriers.

Although the literature on leisure constraints has been growing, there has been a limited number of studies on travel constraints, especially travel constraints for individuals with disabilities. Murray and Sproats (1990) conducted a study in Australia and identified three types of constraints to travel for persons with disabilities: economic, physical, and attitudinal. Blazey (1989) studied travel constraints for older adults and found this group most commonly experienced travel constraints in five categories: external resources, time, approval, abilities/social, and physical well-being. It is likely that Blazey's findings could also fit into the three categories identified by Murray and Sproats.

The lack of previous research prompted researchers at Illinois State University to study this issue with a grant from the National Center on Accessibility. Turco, Stumbo, and Garncarz (1998) examined constraints to travel in Illinois for people with disabilities, illnesses, or limitations. Four focus groups conducted in 1997 and 1998 involved clients of independent living centers. Participants had a variety of disabilities including cerebral palsy, spinal-cord injury, post-polio, visual impairments, and mobility limitations.

The results of this investigation are reported for four major tourism sectors: attractions, information resources, transportation, and accommodations. Within each section, recommendations are given for travelers with disabilities--and for tourism service providers. Remember, too, that much of this advice applies directly to park and recreation departments that operate facilities and parks as tourist destinations.

Attractions

Attractions are the elements of a tourism destination that stimulate visitation. They may be contrived (theme parks, sporting events); nature-based (oceans, mountains, climate); historical (museums, antique shopping); or social-cultural (festivals, visiting friends or relatives). Most of the constraints encountered by tourists with disabilities were architectural or environmental in nature, mainly focusing on site inaccessibility. Some in the study felt that reduced entrance fees were in order because the site barriers restricted them from enjoying the opportunity as much as their counterparts without disabilities could.

It is recommended that individuals with disabilities gather as much information as possible about the site accessibility of their intended travel destination. Tourism attraction providers need to provide better, more complete information about site accessibility and the accommodations they have made for travelers with disabilities. In addition, consideration for reduced fees should be made at those attractions where full accessibility is not possible.

Information Resources

Most persons in the study relied on key informants to locate information about things to do, places to stay, and how to get to the destination. These key informants included family and friends, selected travel agents, and, in some cases, the Internet. Those who used a travel agency remained loyal to the agent.

Recommendations for those with disabilities included finding a trustworthy person to serve as a reliable source of information about travel destination and transportation accessibility. It is likely that tapping into several key informants would yield the most reliable and usable information. On the other hand, it is clear that the tourism industry needs to provide information that meets the needs of travelers with disabilities. Since tourists with disabilities are gathering information from a variety of sources, service providers should use several means of communication to hit this target market.

Transportation

An issue among some travelers with is a major determinant in deciding whether or not to visit the establishment. Travelers with disabilities assumed that newer restaurants and nightclubs were more likely to comply with ADA standards.

Some individuals encountered problems when making hotel reservations. In some facilities, even when accessible rooms were available, the hotel policy was that specific rooms could not be reserved for an individual, following a first-checked-in, first-served rule.

The sample also reported that some room accommodations promoted by hotel properties as accessible were not actually accessible to people with disabilities. For example, showers with handrails accommodated some people, but for many in wheelchairs, bathtubs presented a major barrier.

Some hotels also offered rooms that were too cluttered, thereby restricting wheelchair movement. Other frequently encountered flaws included restrictive appliances (such as lamps and TVs), frontdesk counters that were too high, a lack of nonsmoking rooms, and accessible rooms that were inconveniently located.

One of the ways in which tourists with disabilities negotiated these constraints was by contacting the hotel directly, thus avoiding a hotel chain's national toll-free phone number. A second strategy was to find out when the facility was built or most recently renovated before making a decision.

Accommodation providers -- and many park, recreation, and leisure professionals need to increase their awareness of accessibility standards as well as examine their own policies about everything from general accessibility to room design to reservation procedures. Most staff at hotels and motels would benefit from additional training in sensitivity and awareness regarding travelers with disabilities.

Lessons to be Learned

* More and more people -- both with and without disabilities -- are traveling more often.

* People with disabilities are becoming more vocal in expressing their needs and desires, especially with regard to flexibility in travel options.

* People with disabilities are more likely to be disproportionately loyal to businesses (such as specific travel agents and hotels) that best serve their needs.

* People with disabilities are more likely to rely on a limited number of information resources from which to gather travel information. This is partly due to the lack of service flexibility they encounter in negotiating with unexpected barriers during tourism experiences.

* People with disabilities are more likely to choose newer facilities in anticipation that they will meet federal (ADA) accessibility standards.

* The tourism industry needs to aggressively market to the 54 million people with disabilities.

* The tourism industry needs to become more familiar with accessibility standards and the needs of tourists with disabilities. Accessibility audits performed by knowledgeable people with disabilities may be a key to the improvement of facilities and services.

* The tourism industry needs to increase its customer service training in order to serve those with disabilities and limitations. Comprehensive programs should include policy-setters as well as front-line staff.

* The tourism industry needs to develop policies that are barrier-free with zero exclusion (Germ & Schleien, 1997).

References

Blazey, M. A. (1987). The difference between participants and nonparticipants in a senior travel program. Journal of Travel Research, 23(3): 7-11.

Crawford, D.W. & G. Godbey (1987). Reconceptualizing barriers to family leisure. Leisure Sciences, 9(2):119-128.

Germ, P. A. & S.J. Schleien (1997). Inclusive community leisure services: Responsibilities of key players. Therapeutic Recreation Journal, 31(1): 22-37.

McGuire, E (1984). A factor analytic study of leisure constraints in advanced adulthood. Leisure Sciences, 8, 313-326.

Murray, M., & Sproats, J. (1990). The disabled traveler: Tourism and disability in Australia. The Journal of Tourism Studies, 1, 9-14.

Turco, D., N. Stumbo & J. Garncarz (1998). Constraints to travel for people with disabilities. Conference paper presented at "Disabled but Enabled and Empowered," Rochester, NY.

United States Census Bureau. (1997). The official statistics [On-line]. Available: http://www.census.gov/

United States Department of Transportation. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. (1995). American Travel Survey [On-line]. Available: http://www.bts.gov/programs/ats/

Online resources for travelers with disabilities -- and the agencies seeking additional information to better assist them.

Access-Able Travel http://www.access-able.com

Accessible Journeys http://www.disabilitytravel.com/ E-mail: [email protected]

ADA Vacations Plus/Medical Travel http://www.vacations-plus.com E-mail: [email protected]

Barrier-Free Vacations http://www.Barrier-Free-vacations.com/

Disability Access in the Canadian Rockies http://www.selkirk-tangiers.com/~access/

Flying Wheel Travel http://www.flyingwheels.com/ E-mail: [email protected]

Global Access http://www.geocities.com/Paris/1502/

Hidden Treasures Travel Agency http://httravel.com/ E-mail: [email protected]

Insiders Guide to Southern California http://www.geocities.com/ Heartland/6295/access.htm

The Minnesota Broken Wing Connection http://www.uslink.net/~daryl/index.html

Mobility International USA http://www.miusa.org/index.htm

National Park Service http://www.nps.gov/

New Horizons -- Information for the Air Traveler with a Disability http://www.faa.gov/acr/dat.htm

Society for the Advancement of Travel for the Handicapped http://www.sath.org/

Travel Turtle Tours http://www.access-able.com/tours/turtle/ E-mail: [email protected]

Wheels Up! Wheelchair Travel Specialist http://www.wheelsup.com/ E-mail: [email protected]

Wilderness Inquiry http://www.wildernessinquiry.org/

COPYRIGHT 1998 National Recreation and Park Association
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group