TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

Dan Tobin

TravelAbility to Host Emerging Markets Summit 2024 on Inclusive Travel in San Francisco

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA, October 11, 2023 – TravelAbility, the leading organization for accessible and inclusive travel, announced today that it will host its Emerging Markets Summit on October 28-30, 2024 at the Argonaut Hotel in San Francisco. The summit will bring together travel industry professionals, disability advocates, and travelers with diverse needs to explore the latest trends and best practices in inclusive travel.

The Argonaut Hotel, located in the historic Fisherman’s Wharf, is one of the most accessible hotels in San Francisco, according to several travelers with disabilities who praise its facilities and its services. The hotel offers spacious rooms, roll-in showers, grab bars, lowered counters, and other amenities that cater to the needs of travelers with a range of abilities.

The summit will provide travel industry professionals with a big-picture view and concrete strategies for tapping the growing market of accessible travel. Topics include:

  • How to design and market inclusive travel products and services
  • How to reach and engage travelers with disabilities and other emerging markets
  • How to create accessible and inclusive destinations and experiences
  • How to leverage technology and innovation to enhance accessibility and inclusion
  • How the emerging markets of diversity, sustainability, and accessibility intersect one another.

The summit will also offer two exclusive concurrent sessions for attendees who want to deepen their knowledge and skills in inclusive travel. The first session is a two-day immersive accessibility training for travel professionals, led by TravelAbility Ambassador Kristy Durso, who has developed an in-depth accessibility certification program. The second session is a half-day workshop on the travel needs of senior travelers, in collaboration with AARP.

“We are excited to host this summit and share our vision of making travel accessible and inclusive for everyone,” said Jake Steinman, the founder and CEO of TravelAbility. “We invite all travel industry professionals to join us and learn from each other.”

This year’s summit in Savannah sold out. To register for the summit or learn more about TravelAbility, visit or follow TravelAbility on Facebook and LinkedIn.

TravelAbility is dedicated to making travel possible for everyone, regardless of their abilities. In its five-year history, the organization has established itself within the tourism industry as a leading innovator, advocate, and resource on accessible travel.

EMS 2023 Presentation of the Month: Visit Tampa Bay

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In each edition of Insider we’ll be sharing presentations from the Emerging Markets Summit. This month’s featured presentation comes from Patrick Harrison at Visit Tampa Bay and focuses on their Accessible Riverwalk Pass.

Our Takeaway: This campaign serves as a great model and Patrick shares concrete results. Nearly 2000 passes were sold and generated $103,000 which was distributed to their partners.  Fun Fact: Most sales were to residents via word of mouth. Read more

Slide from the Visit Tampa Bay showing these statistics: 1986 Total Riverwalk Passes Sold with $103K Total Sales (Profits Distributed to Partners)

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Plus-Size Travel Advocates Speak Out

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Jeff Jenkins, an African American male with cropped beard and glasses and JerVae Anthony, an African American female with hoop earings

Whatever size we are, we know the look. The one a large airline passenger receives from a seatmate when they arrive at their row. Sometimes the look is accompanied by an audible gasp. 

“Society has an anti-fat bias, and you can encounter it anywhere,” writes Cheyenne Davis in the essay “The Uneasy Truth About Traveling While Fat” in the online magazine thrillist. “Living in a world fueled by fatphobia creates unnecessary barriers, from limited clothing options to discrimination in medical care, employment, and relationships. According to the NIH, more than two in five adults live in a large body. And yet despite this fact, we continue to face daily challenges—including in travel, where inequities like the ones outlined below so often deny us access to the same life-changing experiences available to others.”

Jeff Jenkins, a National Geographic travel host and award-winning content creator, says that airlines can definitely do more to make flights accessible for everyone. “We are still waiting on the FAA to give dimensions for standard seat sizes for each aircraft,” he says. “We hope that they listen to us and make the seats wider.”

Throw in additional ableist and racial biases, and these roadblocks can escalate substantially. “Whenever I’ve visited Chicago, I’ve observed a recurring issue where Black disabled individuals, myself included, are left waiting for assistance for extended periods,” explains Jervae Dionne Anthony, artist and founder of Fat Black Liberation. “The available wheelchairs don’t cater to those with infinifat bodies, typically above size 32. It’s a struggle to survive a form of violence that often goes unnoticed and unaddressed.” Read more. 

Our Takeaway: The failure—and in some cases the refusal—to meet the needs of plus-size travelers is a serious accessibility issue for the entire industry. Beyond airline seats and wheelchairs, there are size problems with amusement park rides, hotel bed dimensions, zipline harnesses, and on and on. . . 

How Choose Lansing Chose Its New Name and Its Focus on Accessibility: Q & A with Julie Pingston, President and CEO of the DMO

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The DMO's new logo: Choose Lansing with Choose in bright orange and Lansing in big blue letters. The tagline below reads Plan on Something Greater

Julie Pingston is not one to coast or think small. She and her team at Choose Lansing just unveiled a new name, a new logo, and new taglines based on nearly a year of research and design. And the unveiling was no soft rollout. How about halftime of a Michigan State football game? But Julie is on to the next huge project. In a few weeks, the DMO will host their inaugural accessible travel summit. TravelAbility Insider Editor Dan Tobin was fortunate to catch a few minutes with Julie to talk about how to capture the highlights of a diverse region, the passion that drives her commitment to accessibility, and what she has learned from a year in the Destination A11y Club.

DT: I really love your new logos and I thought it was great that you explain the thinking behind the changes on your website. Why did you decide to do that?

JP: We worked almost a year on the rebranding and we had gone through such an extensive process and we had come to an outcome that we were so proud of. We wanted to explain everything that went on behind it so that people could understand some of the choices we made. Our name is now Choose Lansing instead of Greater Lansing Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is a lot shorter for one thing. Our research told us that when people are planning things for our region they value how we partner with them and help them make choices. So that ties into the word “choose.” And we are a regional organization so the tagline “Plan on something greater” represents the idea of the entire region. And we used a pinpoint icon with the star inside to show we’re a capital city. Then the different colors showcase that we have a lot of diversity and different options here. So it was all very purposeful. 

The day after we launched the new name and logo, we showed it in our Spartan football stadium during the first home game and 75,000 people got to take a look at it. And the crowd liked it so that was very exciting.  

DT: I’m hearing a couple of layers of meaning in the logo design. One is the idea of diversity. It also seems to speak to your flexibility and your customization, that you provide choice

JP: That’s exactly what we’re trying to convey.

DT: What were the key ideas that came out of the research?

JP: You know, we are a destination with a big 10 university and a state capital and a lot of other resources. How do we best portray all of that? That’s how we came up with the central idea of choosing.  If you come here we’ve got lots of things to choose from; we’ve got lots of opportunities. We have trails and outdoor recreation and we also have urban destinations. The main point to our clients is that we are going to be engaged with you at all levels and really give that positive experience.

DT: How did you get started with the accessibility assessments and your focus on autism? 

JP: We started with our work with accessibility related to neurodiverse opportunities. A number of our attractions and other locations were looking to add programming so we proactively brought people together within the community to find tools create programming for those traveling on the autism spectrum or with other neurodiversities. Our job as the destination marketing organization is to let people know that we have all these opportunities here. We have a couple of programs that were drawing people from throughout the state. But we wanted to  find more things for those families to do so they are not always going to the same place every time they come here. And our attractions really did step up and every single one of them basically created something that was pointed toward more neurodiversity. 

We then just put out the word out in the marketplace  that we had all of these opportunities. We also had the opportunity to add training to our front line staff so we partnered with the Michigan Autism Association and residential options and they trained more than 1000 people so far on how to help guests with accommodations and understanding all the different needs that travelers might have. That really gravitated throughout the community because suddenly we were not being asked to train exclusively our hospitality businesses but we were being asked to train all kinds of businesses. That was six years ago and then we were intent on making our destination accessible in all ways and for all needs. The pandemic slowed us down a little bit but we were always very intent on moving forward to provide opportunities and information about all the accessibility points in our community. 

On October 26 we are doing our inaugural tourism accessibility summit for all of our hospitality partners and anybody who really wants to learn how to heighten the guest experience by providing information and just doing more being more aware.

DT: How are you measuring the results of all these great initiatives? Are you looking at the bottom line or are you looking more at customer service and satisfaction?

JP: Both definitely. We have seen more people travel here looking for these resources that we have put into place. Some of our attractions do track where their visitors come from that participate in the programming and we have seen an increase in the number of visitors from further away and in and staying over. I always think of something Jake Steinman says:  At some point we’re all going to be in need, having mobility issues and needing all the accommodations we can find. So I just think of this work on accessibility as planning for the future.

DT: Choose Lansing was invited to join TravelAbility’s Destination A11y Club last year. What are you taking away from that group so far?

JP: So much. It’s been very beneficial to us as a destination to be able to have the resources of the other members so that we can ask questions or share an idea. TravelAbility has also created a wonderful playbook for DMOs that we’ve been able to use locally with our partners. You know, you don’t know what you don’t know and then you start going through this playbook and all of a sudden they’re discovering things that they never thought about, It gives information in a very easy to digest format. Everyone can take that information and then make change within their venue or their property or their attraction. We use the playbook as a guideline to steer people and that’s how we got to the tourism summit where we can pull all that together as a destination and showcase for everybody. 

DT: It sounds like you’re playing a key leadership role in this work of raising awareness. But you’re also playing a convener role of shining a light on what venues and attractions are doing and bringing them together. 

JP:  That’s absolutely accurate. Our goal is to just bring all the things that are happening together so that we all can share and create that destination wide experience for all that come here. It’s not like you can only go to this hotel or this attraction to find that experience. You can go anywhere in the region. 

DT: Is there any particular moment you can  point to that crystallizes why you do this work? 

JP: Our theater does sensory-inclusive performances. The first one I went to I met several families and every single one of them said that they had never had the opportunity to go out together as a family before. I have a good friend who has a son with autism and she has taught me that when her son was young she could never go to a theater or a museum or any kind of art gallery. And now you know those opportunities are available because of the work that we’ve done for those on the autism spectrum. And when I see these families at the theater and the children are all dressed up everyone looks so excited . . .  it’s a beautiful experience and that’s how I know that we are on the right path. I tear up. 

Our Takeaway: Julie Pingston is a standout in our field–a great leader, bridge-builder, and advocate.


How Autism-Certified Hotel and Airline Brands Made a Huge Difference for One Family

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Felicia Callafange smiling on the airplane alongside her mother Flavia. They are holding a doll and a stuffed teddy bear. (Photo credit: Autism Double-Checked.)

Fourteen-year-old Felicia Callafange, who has autism, is an extremely friendly and high-energy person. Her mother Flavia said she loves talking to people, which can sometimes come across as “aggressive,” and she has trouble sitting still during long plane rides. Callafange has learned that there isn’t much she can do to calm Felicia during a meltdown.

“For someone who doesn’t know what autism is and just looks at her, she’s a pretty girl with bad behavior, and I’m a bad mother,” Callafange said. “I heard these insults all the time.”

But a recent trip from their home in Chile to New York City provided a radically different experience, thanks to certifications provided by Alan Day’s Autism Double-Checked. After flying LATAM airlines and staying at Virgin Hotels of New York City, Flavia said the family will only travel with autism-friendly companies from now on. Read more.

Our Takeaway: Partnerships between travel companies and autism experts/advocates can make a dramatic difference to families with autistic children. Autism Double-Checked is providing an excellent model of what can be done through education and staff training. For example, Karisma Hotels & Resorts launched an Autism Concierge service that uses autism-trained “e-mail concierges” to deal with real time issues. The email concierge concept is an important (and affordable) innovation, as far as we’re concerned. The fact that it’s actually working can open new possibilities for hotels to become more accessible for families dealing with cognitive disabilities.