Tourism marketing organizations would feel more confident proposing or expanding accessibility initiatives if they had a greater knowledge of the latest product innovations and how they can be a valuable competitive differentiator. To address this opportunity, TravelAbilitySummit created LaunchPad, a pre-conference workshop planned for the afternoon of November 11, 2019, in San Francisco.
LaunchPad will bring together socially conscious entrepreneurs, who have created products and services that make travel easier for people with disabilities, and established travel end users—hotels, airports, attractions, and destinations. “The goal is to connect entrepreneurs with new distribution channels in the travel industry and to help jumpstart new accessibility initiatives,” says Jake Steinman, founder and CEO of both Launchpad and TravelAbility Summit. The accessible travel market has been estimated to be in excess of $17 billion dollars* annually and growing at a rapid pace as baby boomers age into a disability.
Leading travel media representatives and angel investors who can provide exposure, advice, and capital to help these companies grow will also be attending. “We have received a commitment from Blue Umbrella,” said Steinman, “a disability technology accelerator that will take part in the workshop and keep office hours during the conference to meet one on one with founders. A list of invited attendees for Launchpad is available here.
The creation of LaunchPad is a result of the TravelAbility Summit team’s deep dive into three categories:
- –a fast-growing accessible technology market
- –the disability community’s changing needs
- –feedback from travel marketers asking for next steps to help them to create meaningful accessibility initiatives.
To that end, TravelAbility released The Fab 50 in February—50 products and services that are available to make the travel experience easier for people with disabilities— and from that list, we’ve invited some of the most affordable and practical to present their products and services at LaunchPad in San Francisco.
“Because there hasn’t been a disability travel conference in the U.S. in over 13 years,” explained Steinman, “there hasn’t been a venue dedicated to new assistive technology, apps, products and services designed to help people with disabilities travel more independently. We are looking forward to watching the sparks fly as these communities come together. We’ll be tracking the outcome to build the business case for accessibility in travel.”
*2015 Open Doors Study on the Accessible Travel Market
(The Fabulous 50 list will be distributed to over 2400 destinations, hotels, attractions and suppliers in travel and disability communities.
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