Inclusive travel: What Travelers with Disabilities Need to Know About Their Rights
Inclusive travel:
What travellers with disabilities need to know about their rights
Travelling should be an accessible and enjoyable experience for everyone, including those with disabilities. But with barriers to travel which might not always be obvious, it’s normal for some to feel a tad hesitant about taking a holiday – both at home or abroad.
More is being done than ever before to ensure the rights of disabled travellers are being taken into account at every stage of their journey. When you know your rights are protected, you can focus on enjoying your holiday and making the most of your time away.
This guide will be your first port of call for understanding accessibility standards and rights. We also share some practical tips for navigating transport, accommodation, and any additional service requirements you might need as part of your trip.
Chapter 1
The current landscape of accessible travel
We all know that accessible travel is important for those with a disability. But what do the numbers tell us? Here’s a clearer picture of how people feel about taking a holiday with a disability, as well as the positive impact these kinds of trips are having on the tourism sector as a whole.
Accessible travel and holiday statistics
It’s believed there are as many as 16.1 million people in the UK currently living with a disability. In London alone, 15.7% of all people who live in the nation’s capital are registered as disabled.
In London, 1.2 million of all people who live in the nation’s capital are registered as disabled.
It’s perhaps little surprise then that more people than ever now carry a Blue Badge in their vehicle to make travel easier. The Blue Badge Scheme exists to make it simpler for those with accessibility requirements to travel.. That means things like getting concessions to cover the price of parking, as well as providing parking spots closer to your end destination – whether at an airport, train station, or even your local supermarket.
In 2023, 2.57 million Blue Badges were held by Brits. That represented a sizable increase of 5.7% from March of the previous year. The numbers show the desire of UK residents with disabilities to get out and travel independently. But despite the encouraging figures, research still shows that disabled adults take 25% fewer trips on average than their non-disabled peers.
Despite being something we’re all meant to look forward to, as many as 51% of disabled respondents in an Ocean Holidays survey cited stress as their main detractor from getting away. The full list showed disabled travellers’ main concerns to be:
51%
(of respondents) find holidays stressful
36%
find them frustrating to plan and book
32%
can’t find affordable and suitable accommodation
31%
felt there was a lack of information of support offered to disabled travellers
26%
said staff lacked knowledge when they reached out to them
25%
cited hidden fees as their main barrier to travel
Source: Ocean Holidays survey
As a result of these issues, as many as 65% of respondents said they now had a more negative opinion of travel. The good news is that the tourism industry is taking note of these concerns.
Thankfully, more is being done to make sure that disabled travellers are able to enjoy their time away. Grants and schemes are now commonplace across the globe, with attention focused on a number of areas.
Some recent examples include:
£94m
accessibility-focused renovation at Fort Wayne airport
£950,000
investment by the city of Trentino, in Italy, to a number of popular tourist areas – primarily their Sound of the Dolomites experience.
£3.2m
investment by the Brazilian city of Curitiba across a series of inclusive projects – including a “Garden of Sensations”, as well as making the Museu Oscar Niemeyer (Latin America’s largest art museum) 100% accessible for all visitors.
Europe’s most accessible destinations
As attitudes towards and the understanding of the needs of disabled travellers continues to change, some countries have been quick to adopt accessible practices. The European Union (EU) has been at the forefront of a lot of positive changes. This, coupled with its close proximity and familiarity to the UK, means that a lot of disabled British travellers choose to holiday in Europe.
Conference and Incentive Travel (C&IT) recently put some of the continent’s capital cities under a microscope to see which offered the best experience to those with accessibility requirements. They measured their system by assigning a score between 1-100 for factors like restaurants, things to do, and accessible hotels.
For those looking to expand their horizons beyond a staycation, the rest of the top 10 list looked as follows:
The top 10 European destinations for accessibility
*Average accessibility scores.
Source: C&IT
London’s ranking was thanks largely to how accessible their restaurants were, with the UK capital leading the way with 50.5% of eateries going above and beyond to make the dining experience more comfortable for disabled guests.
Meanwhile, Oslo led the way for accessibility in their hotels (a total score of 24.8%), while Amsterdam had the widest array of accessible activities to get involved with. The Dutch capital scored an impressive 39.2% across all activities.
Revenue from accessibility tourism
The investments being made to accommodate disabled tourists are paying off for the UK tourism industry. The spending power of disabled people is often referred to as “the purple pound”.
The money being generated by the purple pound is helping the industry continue to recover after the world went into lockdown in 2020. In total, trips in England taken by those with a disability, or where a group member has a disability, are believed to bring in as much as £14.6bn annually.
Domestic overnight stays made up £6.7bn of that, while day spending at attractions and restaurants brought in another £7.4bn. The remaining £0.5bn came from the total combined spend by foreign travellers with a disability to the UK.
Domestic overnight stays made up £6.7bn of the £14.6bn generated by the purple pound in 12 months to June 2023.
In total, 24% of all overnight spending and 18% of all day trip expenses came as a result of this bracket of travellers across the whole of 2023. The average breakdown for overnight stays by UK residents was £264, while the average spend on days out was £267.
The average length of a stay varied a lot when comparing those on a staycation and foreign arrivals. The numbers showed:
Staycations:
3.2 nights
Accessible travel
2.9 nights
All travel average
Foreign visitors:
11.6 nights
Accessible travel
7.3 nights
All travel average
Across the globe as a whole, it’s estimated that disabled travellers represent a potential market of £47bn a year. Because of the increasing number of disabled people, that figure is expected to grow 12% year-on-year as more is being done to accommodate the needs of disabled tourists.