Tourism, Development, and Disability

[Scott Rains]

In 1999, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) introduced the concept of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). One of its basic ideas is for highly indebted poor countries to develop their own comprehensive strategies on poverty reduction on the principle that civil society should participate in the formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the poverty reduction strategy (PRS).

Poverty is a cause and a consequence of disability. Although this is evident, we as people with disabilities (PwD) and our NGOs (disabled people's organizations; DPOs) had to learn that PRSPs and the proposed measures did not automatically take our needs and interests into account in the process of being written. Thus PwD and DPOs rarely have the opportunity to participate in the formulation and implementation of PRSPs. A handbook was created to address that problem: www.making-prsp-inclusive.org .

At the concrete level, infrastructure is constructed that "discriminates by design." It is inaccessible and strengthens the ties between poverty and disability by architecturally-enforced exclusion. The Disability Rights Movement invented the concept an seven principles of Universal Design to address this. The goal of Universal Design is social inclusion and full participation in civil society by PwD. This is codified in the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Tourism is one of the major economic stimulants in many developing countries. Only since 1999 have serious studies of the travel behavior and purchasing power of PwD been done. In the US, to take only one example, in 2005 the 42 million PwD spent $13.6 billion on travel. Slowly the industry has taken note changing the design of the built environment and coming to view PwD as sources of profit central to their economic well-being. Accessible venues, travel packages customized to disability culture, and employees with disabilities have been the ongoing result. In this way the travel and hospitality industry is contributing to poverty alleviation at a systemic level.

This is timely because Article 30 of the CRPD is the first international human rights document to establish the right to physical access to and programmatic participation in tourism.

Application of Universal Design to the field of travel and hospitality is known as Inclusive Tourism and Inclusive Destination Development.

We organized the First International Conference on Inclusive Tourism in Tapiei in 2005 and the Second International Conference on Inclusive Tourism in Bangkok in 2007. My opening keynote address in Taipei was entitled, "The Global Reach of Inclusive Tourism". At the Bangkok address, hosted by UNESCAP at the UN campus, was, "Inclusive Tourism: A New Strategic Alliance for the Disability Rig...

The need continues for research, training, product and policy development, and marketing.

[Len Cordiner]

Hi Scott, I am sure will wil have a lot to talk about. We are just embarking on a project with Craig Grimes (from accessiblebarcelona.com and accessiblenicaragua.com ) to extend the scope of what WHL is doing (see www.whl.travel) to include travel services for PwDs. It seems possible, given that our travel business is built around a network of inbound tour operators (selected because of their sustainable tourism activities....people who care), that we could fairly easily extend the travel offering to PwDs.

The WHL business which started as a project of the IFC (part of the World Bank Group) had a mission from the outset to try and leverage the Internet to improve the market access possibilities for SME travel service providers in the developing world. To do this we ended up with a rather unusual "intermediated" model, where we have a local partner in each destination acting as a hub to "bridge the last mile". This local partner (we called them MPOs.....our MarketPlace Operators) does all those things best done locally (such as seeking out and contracting local suppliers, loading digital content online, acting as the interface between travellers and the service suppliers etc.) and WHL supports all those things best done centrally (the technology piece including the booking engine, the management system, payment gateways,etc.; plus web and offline marketing, copy editing etc.).

In short. things are ramping up very quickly since spinning off from the IFC as a private company 2 years ago and we are now live in 83 destinations in over 50 countries and have a further 55 sites under construction. We are signing new destinations at the rate of 2-3 per week now. Up until Craig's approach (he stumbled over us on the Ashoka Geotourism Challenge competition) I must admit we had only really thought about our network of local tour operators in the context of how they could source and supply interesting travel product for able bodied travellers. Craig's approach got us thinking ...... and after canvassing our existing MPOs and getting a very enthusiastic response, we are now looking to building a global travel service for PwDs. Many of our MPOs have done tours with PwDs previously but generally as one off type projects ...and without any real knowledge of what was involved. No doubt the experience was a mixed one for both parties. Hopefully working with Craig and others from the PwD community we can change this and provide a service which will make travel for PwDs to the developing world a little easier.

[Scott Rains]

Actually, Len. I sent Craig to you.

He's good and really follows up on things (like the book idea he & I are shopping around.) You'll get quality work from him on this project and now you are networked with all of us in this niche through Craig.

For whatever reason the administrators of DC didn't activate the IM tool so I don't have a private way to send you an invitation to our innovation incubator, Tour Watch. If you head to my blog you'll find my email address. Write and I'll send you the registration URL.

[Sher Ahmed Khan]

Hello There Scott...............best of luck in your endevours....'Poverty is a cause and a consequence of disability'. This your quote, pertains generally with everything from institutional and government failures and administeration tools..................................

[Craig Grimes]

Hi Scott and Len,

I'm glad that you two have managed to find each other. As I mentioned to you in an email yesterday Len, Scott is very much at the forefront of Inclusive Travel and Universal Design, not just in the US but worldwide and spearheads much of the policy making that effects people with disabilities.

He's a great contact to have and I will be (and have already started) working with him and many other professionals from our sector of the industry to brainstorm ideas for the WHL project.

[Becky]

Hi Scott,
Thanks for the great post. I’m a student studying both the issues of international growth and technological accessibility for PwDs, but I’ve found that there is a tendency for both of these disciplines to overlook the needs of the other. I was becoming swayed toward the argument that a community needed to get out of its overall poverty before any issues of accessibility could be addressed there. This post is the first that I’ve heard of combining the two in tourism, and it gives me hope that they can be applied simultaneously to the benefit of the whole community.

I think that Inclusive Tourism can have a great positive influence, both in attracting tourists to developing nations and in promoting universal design internationally. I imagine that Inclusive Tourism will gain popularity as the baby boomer population of the United States grows older and develops age-related disabilities. This generation is unlikely to stop traveling, but its members may have special needs that determine where they stay on vacations. Hotels with wheelchair-friendly rooms and specialized accommodations for the vision-impaired or hard-of-hearing will see increasing patronage and economic benefits, thus encouraging other hotels to follow universal design principles as well to keep up.

But I am curious - how do you foresee the Inclusive Tourism movement developing? Is it going to be marketed as a separate type of tourism, similar to the way that gay/lesbian travel has become a genre of travel in itself, with dedicated destinations and travel agencies? Would some destinations with the best accommodations arise as “inclusive” or “accessible” destinations, where the PwD community proudly makes up the overwhelming majority of its tourists? Or is the Inclusive Tourism focused more on making as many mainstream hotels as possible become accessible, so that PwDs can easily and stigma-lessly find a hotel at any destination?

One last question: have you noticed any mixups between “inclusive tourism” and “all-inclusive” vacations? I imagine that this could cause a great deal of confusion for someone who isn’t familiar with the terms.

[Scott Rains]

Becky,

Wonderful to meet you. Excellent questions!

Your paraphrase of Inclusive Tourism captures my understanding of its value, allied concepts, and the role boomers will play in shaping it.

I see us at the end of pioneering era of separate specialized travel agencies, tour operators, and venues. I came to that conclusion by interviewing people who have been in the field for 10 years or more. This also aligns well with a disability community ideological bias toward mainstreaming and the Disability Studies observation that exclusion is the first social strategy used in handicapping (or "constructing disability").

There is also a disability pride movement that might argue for majority PwD but I have not seen or heard of this in practice. There are emerging 'destinations of choice" but our numbers and social resources tend not to give this the same clout as GLBT travel. Some of us "old-timers" are discussing how we can link our individual decisions in purchasing second homes, condos, timeshares and the like into informal networks spread around the world strategically or neighborhoods gathered together.

Yes, there is a confusion with "all-inclusive." The intent in choosing the phrase was to signal to our political/social allies the goal of full social inclusion and distinguish from mere physical accessibility as an afterthought or accommodation as legal mandate rather than acceptance of us as persons. The confusion comes on the travel industry side - bbut they were not the primary audience in mind when the phrase was chosen.