There is currently a lot more focus on accessibility for travelers with disabilities.
“Is the situation getting better? It’s getting better little by little. There’s no question about that,” Kondo said.
For example, there are new rules to make air travel more comfortable for people with limited mobility and efforts to expand Americans with Disabilities Act rules that apply to hotels. Hospitality schools are adding required courses on accessibility. And disability advisors, apps and websites are arranging African safaris, accessible hiking trips and package tours to destinations like Patagonia and Machu Picchu.
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Travelers with disabilities continue to be frustrated. A viral video of an American Airlines baggage handler doing a somersault in a wheelchair on an airport tarmac has reignited complaints from disabled passengers. It took the Department of Transportation seven years to enact rules requiring more handicap-accessible bathrooms on single-aisle planes (wide-body planes already have to have them), and it will take another 11 years for them to go into effect. In February, new rules were proposed to require more training for employees to help passengers with disabilities and to fine airlines that damage or take too long to retrieve wheelchairs.
While these improvements may take time, one thing that’s already happening is “the recognition that people with disabilities are not underclass,” says Talita Karsanji Davenock, CEO of Travel for All, who founded the company after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “That could be something small, like helping bring coffee to your table or having someone who speaks ASL.”
In fact, one iconic milestone was a 2019 Marriott commercial based on a true story that showed a hotel employee communicating with a guest using American Sign Language.
Many of these improvements have come about thanks to increased activism from the disability community itself and from advocates who have more exposure than previous generations to classmates and colleagues with disabilities at school and in the workplace, and to disabled characters in popular culture.
“We’re moving away from a generation of ableist attitudes and prejudices and into a generation that’s more understanding,” said Dave Estrada, a Weston attorney and program manager at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital who himself uses a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident.
But another force that often drives change in the hospitality industry is at work here too: the realization that the market is large and expanding, especially as the baby boomer generation ages.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in four Americans has a disability, including 12 percent with mobility impairments, 6 percent with hearing impairments, and 5 percent with vision impairments.
According to travel and tourism marketing company MMGY Global, seniors spend nearly $60 billion a year on travel and take roughly the same number of leisure trips per year as able-bodied people.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about the money,” Karsanji-Davenock said.
COVID-19 shutdowns slowed momentum, and the resurgence in travel demand since then has led to crowded airports, hotels and tourist destinations, along with long lines, complicating things especially for travelers with disabilities.
A rendering of a prototype seat for Delta Airlines’ new planes that will allow people who use power wheelchairs to remain seated during the flight. PriestmanGoode/HANDOUT PriestmanGoode
Now, the European Accessible Tourism Network is heralding a “fresh start” in its efforts to standardize accessibility guidelines. In the United States, the Department of Transportation is working on new rules that would allow wheelchair-using airline passengers to remain in their wheelchairs throughout the flight, rather than being transferred to smaller wheelchairs. Delta Airlines is already testing the idea.
Tourism bureaus, including the Massachusetts Tourism Office, have added accessibility information for travelers with disabilities, and accessibility breakout sessions at hospitality conferences now have hundreds of attendees compared to a dozen or so people, said Jake Steinman, founder and CEO of the advocacy group TravelAbility. The group also helped create a course on accessibility that began in the spring and will be required for all students at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management.
“Disabled people have been fighting this issue for a long time, but we’re at a tipping point,” Steinman said.
An aging population also means a growing share of customers with mobility challenges: Baby Boomers retire at roughly 10,000 a day, and they account for half of consumer spending and 80% of luxury travel bookings. “They don’t want to be called disabled,” says Kalsanji Davenock (her travel agency uses the euphemism “people with special needs”), but they also increasingly need special accommodations.
“At some point in life, everyone is going to have a slightly different way of climbing stairs, or a little bit of blindness or deafness,” says Fred Maass Jr., chief operating officer of Travel for All and past president of the American Council on Disabilities. “The more companies pay attention to that, the more they realize they need to create something that’s inclusive of everyone.”
Social media is already using its power to criticize poor service for travelers with disabilities, as well as a pro-accessibility business coalition called the Valuable 500, which ranks the cities most welcoming to travelers with disabilities (Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo and Las Vegas are ranked based on the number of accessible hotel rooms they have).
“It’s not that disabled people don’t want to travel,” said Maas, who has been using a wheelchair since an accident 43 years ago. “There’s a prejudice that disabled people are all poor and can’t do anything, but in reality there are many disabled people who have the financial means to travel. What we need are places that are easy for us to go to.”
Another new problem is that trendy hotel mattresses are too high for people with disabilities to move around in. Current regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act say nothing about bed height. Ames Hotel
A growing number of travel companies are specializing in accessible travel: Wheel the World, for example, launched an affiliate program for mass travel agents to broaden its reach, and Ahoi, a new app started by an entrepreneur who is forced to use an electric scooter due to a neurological condition, reviews the accessibility of businesses around Boston with plans to expand to other cities.
“People who are anxious and scared of the unknown don’t go to new places,” says Ahoy founder Jake Handel. “That fear is what makes people say, ‘I’m not going to that wedding I’m invited to. I’m not going to go out to dinner.'”
“And it’s no wonder. Even though there have been advancements, travel for people with disabilities remains a danger zone,” Handel said.
“Start with the plane,” he said. “Can you use the bathroom on the plane?” Airlines that generally require checked wheelchairs and scooters lost or damaged 11,389 units in 2022, according to a government report, or about 1.5%. (Spirit Airlines was the worst, losing or damaging 6% of the wheelchairs and scooters it checked.)
“Okay, we’ve landed,” Handel continued, “and now we’re talking about Uber or taxi. Can you get my wheelchair in a taxi or a car?”
When Handel arrived at his Philadelphia hotel, he said, there were stairs to the lobby; the entrance was in a side alley, half-blocked by a trash dump; the door was heavy and required a pin code; and a phone call was answered by a call center hundreds of miles away.
“A lot of times, there’s over-confidence when it comes to accessibility – for example, hotels say they’re accessible, but in reality they’re not,” says Alvaro Silverstein, CEO of Wheel the World, who was paralyzed from the chest down in an accident at age 18 and has since visited 30 countries on five continents. “Who cares if a hotel is accessible if you can’t leave the hotel? Accessibility needs to be considered throughout your entire itinerary, end to end.”
Another new problem is that trendy hotel mattresses are too high for people with disabilities to move around in. Current provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act are silent on bed height.
Kondo called this “friction.”
“When you go to a hotel, you have to go through the back door and take the service elevator. That’s friction, and it adds up,” he said. “And conversely, the more you can reduce the friction, the more people will start using your product.”
Nearly all travelers with disabilities experience these issues, according to the MMGY survey.
Over half were given a different room than the one they booked, 81% had a shower that didn’t work, and over half had a bed that was too high. 86% had problems on the plane, and 79% had problems with transportation at their destination.
Drew Billies has seen worse while organizing trips for people with disabilities for his company, Drew’s Trips, when restaurant managers took one look at his group and told them to leave.
But “things have gotten a lot better,” said Billies, a former special education teacher who lives in Plymouth.
“These clients should be able to get wherever they want to go.”
Jon Marcus can be contacted at [email protected].