Julian John, chief executive officer of people development consultancy Delsion, believes too many tourism operators still don’t fully understand and appreciate the needs of disabled travellers
I love to travel, especially when there’s a plane involved, having done so since an early age and often unaccompanied by my parents to see relatives in Europe as a child. My love affair with air travel has become more strained since 2005, however, when I collapsed with brain damage that left me disabled. I’ve also since adopted two children who are disabled and found that travel for us as a family today can sometimes feel like we’re in the realm of a project that Nasa would be impressed by.
Professionally, these experiences have also led me to launch my own people development consultancy, Delsion, and support organisations in all sectors to create more inclusive experiences for the people they provide services to, and who are in their employment too. So, before we look at what could be done better, I first want to say that I have also seen first-hand how a lot of travel professionals do go that extra mile to create inclusive and accessible experiences from start to finish.
But having made the transition from someone who travelled extensively with the need of minimal planning and forethought to a disabled traveller with disabled dependants in my care too, for me there is still much to be done if we are to make travel a truly inclusive experience for all – there are still too many questions tourism operators may have neglected to ask themselves? So, what are they?
How many disabled passengers are travelling with you?
I would be genuinely interested to see how much of an understanding even major travel industry operators have around the numbers of disabled passengers, and the breadth of specific needs they cater for on an annual basis, for example. Based on my experiences as a disabled traveller, a lot of major airlines, theme parks and other mainstream names in the tourism world are still failing to truly consider the position of the disabled traveller or display any kind of joined up thinking when it comes to supporting that person to complete their journey smoothly, from the time they leave their house to the moment they put their key back in the front door.
There are still so many issues we encounter on every trip, including being stuck on a plane for over an hour when there were no facilities provided to help us disembark, for instance. Are incidents like this (which continue to be reported in the mainstream media on a regular basis) still happening because travel companies on the whole still view disabled passengers as a very minor segment of their customer base?
Because if they don’t have a true understanding of the numbers and needs of disabled passengers that travel with them, and they don’t truly value their custom, then it’s likely these same organisations aren’t prioritising the formation of wider strategies which can help effect inclusive experiences. And without strategies in place, how is everyone (or anyone) within that organisation expected to understand or contribute to what a company might be trying to achieve in terms of supporting customers who sit outside that ‘unconscious traveller’ bracket?
Do all of your teams have the knowledge, empathy and engagement to support inclusive travel?
Do you understand the impact that individuals and teams can have on creating accessible and inclusive environments, rather than just relying on processes? From a previous career I had in retail, I can tell you that everyone in an organisation is and should be responsible for customer service – and this shouldn’t be any different for disabled travellers. There are still massive issues with the time it takes to access the right person and pass on the information required as a disabled passenger, for example, that you can genuinely lose days in planning a trip.
It’s not enough to simply rely on a specialist team or ‘department’ dedicated to supporting those customers requiring for example, special assistance – there has to be a widespread understanding culturally that everyone benefits from being able to support inclusive travel and, in turn, better supporting the special assistance teams and disabled individuals they are there to help.
What kind of guidelines do you have in place as an organisation to help your employees understand how you expect them to engage with passengers that sit outside that ‘standard’ traveller profile? Do you have measures in place that allow you to monitor what you’re doing to reach these passengers, and how well you’re doing it? Do you celebrate those individuals in your organisation that do go that extra mile for the customers they are there to support?
Do you provide regular and consistent training opportunities for your staff around accessibility, diversity and inclusion that can help them overcome any fears they may have in saying or doing the wrong thing when it comes to supporting disabled passengers? In short, do you train to provide inclusive service?
Do you realise the potential in doing all of the above?
To return to my first point, if travel companies aren’t monitoring the numbers of disabled passengers travelling with them, then they aren’t truly understanding their significance regarding the bottom line either. What we do know is that the ‘Purple Pound’, which is the estimated spending power per annum of disabled people and their immediate family, is valued at an estimated £249 billion, and that this is a market sector that cannot be ignored.
The caveat here should always be, however, that accessible and inclusive travel experiences should be a right for everyone. So, have you reviewed and re-imagined how you do things to make a wider consideration for inclusion – and that means inclusion for every traveller, whatever their individual needs may be? From my perspective as a disabled traveller myself, it feels to me that the answer to too many of these questions is still ‘no’. We need to start focusing on the entire travel experience rather than the destination alone.
Pregnant travellers, parents, older people, disabled travellers to name but a few – these are the kinds of labels we’re working to at present. But could we be approaching travel provision around more positive behaviours and support – essentially around everyone who is part of a passenger’s trip – in order to create truly inclusive experiences for all? What if travel operators looked at every touchpoint and every type of customer interaction to focus on creating a really positive change around the service proposition in general?
Finally, are you ready to join me answering some of these questions together? I’m more than happy to be proved wrong if so!