Disability travel experts say agents and suppliers that invest to better serve sector will reap rewards. Amie Keeley reports
The travel and hospitality industries are missing out on a “huge opportunity” by failing to cater properly for customers with disabilities.
The UK economy misses out on £1.8 billion of spend each month by disabled people, according to Scope. The charity says disabled people forgo trips out because they fear they will receive poor service or their needs will not be met.
Speaking at Abta’s Accessible Travel Seminar last month, a panel of disability travel experts said a fear of offending disabled customers was preventing the industry from engaging with this lucrative market. Cost was also cited as a factor.
Arnold Fewell, managing director of marketing agency AVF Marketing and an advocate of disability awareness training, said: “Travel companies, hotels and attractions are missing out on a huge opportunity and there will come a time in the future where accessibility is the norm.”
Fewell, himself a wheelchair user, added: “I would urge businesses to take advantage of the market opportunity as any time and investment you put in now will pay off because you will be at the forefront of the market.”
There are more than 11 million people in the UK with a disability and six million carers, which accounts for 25% of the population.
These include ‘hidden’ disabilities such as dementia, autism and visual impairment.
Tui Group’s head of regulatory affairs, Eddie Redfern, said that prior to the company introducing an accessible travel strategy in 2014, many areas of the business did not understand the scope of what constitutes a PRM (person with reduced mobility).
He warned there was a high cost to travel companies that failed to meet the needs of disabled travellers, both financially and reputationally.
Tui has since created a steering group to review all its processes and contracted a PRM coordinator.
Redfern said the company had “significantly reduced” the number of complaints it received and there were fewer ‘on the day’ issues.
However, he said the business wanted to treat the travel issues of PRMs as seriously as sustainability.
Under the new Package Travel Directive, due to come into effect in 2018, operators will have to provide more information about accessibility, but Redfern said it remained unclear how much detail would be required. He said Tui was looking at including accessible properties in its brochures.
Hotels ‘put lives at risk with lack of evacuation plans’
A disabled person “will die” in this country because the majority of hotels have no emergency evacuation plans for disabled guests.
Disability campaigner Arnold Fewell warned lives were being put at risk because hotels fail to fill in a personal emergency form or plan for guests with reduced mobility.
Speaking at the Abta seminar, Fewell said he was stranded in a London hotel room when the fire alarm went off and had no way of escaping. Only after the alarm stopped and the fire brigade had attended did a member of staff check on him.
A survey carried out earlier this year by hotel-access consultancy AccessChamp found that 80% of respondents had not received a personal emergency form or plan when they checked in at a hotel.
“It’s not good enough to send people to a hotel where they guess what a disability is,” Fewell said. “A personal emergency form is there for the protection of the disabled person and of the hotel.”