Research note“Ebilities” tourism: an exploratory discussion of the travel needs and motivations of the mobility-disabled1
Section snippets
Introduction and literature review
A few years ago, one of the authors’ cousin had a terrible travel experience in the Denver airport during a “hundred year” blizzard. No flights were arriving and departing, no transportation was available to get to local hotels and even emergency medical supplies at the airport were depleted. Passengers were sleeping on the floor of the airport for several days. While this nightmare would be terrible for anyone to go through, the family felt a lot worse that this particular passenger had to
Methodology
The main research objectives are, first, to include mobility-impaired persons in the consideration of preliminary travel/tourism research, and second, to examine their preferred sources of information used to plan travel, and in some cases, their preferred destinations. Some possible conclusions seem obvious. After all, it would be much easier for a wheelchair-bound person to visit a world-class art museum than to hike the rain forest of Central America. However, many disabled are participating
Results
The findings from these informal data collections can do little more than guide future research. The numbers are so small that no statistical meaning can be derived. But, the comments and rankings of sources of information used when planning travel and of desired activities and destinations might be of use to tourism marketers in their attempts to reach the mobility challenged.
Suggestions for further research
Based on the information gathered from the focus group and from respondents in other travel/tourism research who consider themselves disabled, some preliminary ideas emerge as to what issues need to be addressed in future tourism studies with the mobility challenged. Perhaps an on-line survey appearing on a popular web-site with the disabled would generate much higher numbers of respondents and more generalizable data, since “e-abled” respondents often indicate preferences to respond to surveys
Conclusions
The US disabled consumer market is said to be the next consumer niche. According to recent figures, the market is at around 50 million consumers (Kahn, 2000). And these consumers have more disposable income than marketers often think. While the decade-old Americans with Disabilities Act explains some increase in attention to this group by marketers, marketers need to think more carefully about this large consumer niche.
The recreation and travel/tourism industry in the United States is around 36
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The word “ebilities” refers to www.ebility.com, which emphasizes “your abilities online”. The “e” (electronic) portion is later shown to be relevant to this paper with the discussion of the importance on on-line surveys in the collection of marketing research data from the mobility challenged and because of the importance of the Internet as a source of information when planning travel.