TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

Denise Brodey

TravelAbility Insiders Making Big News This Month

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Abilitrek employee seated screaming doing a Tedx talk people laughing
Daman Wandke, Abilitrek

  • Expedia, a longtime partner of NAJ, has signed the Valuable 500 Inclusion Pledge first presented at Davos in 2019. Toby Willis of Expedia is a new member of TravelAbility Summit’s Advisory Board.
  • Peter Slatin of The Slatin Group wrote a strong piece this month in Forbes.com on The Trouble With Accessibility, which you can read here.
  • Geriatrician Leah Witt, M.D., who also recently joined the TravelAbility Summit Advisory Board, was interviewed about age-friendly airports of the future.
  • Daman Wandke of Abilitrek was inducted into the Class of 2019  Susan M. Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame for his mentoring excellence and impact regarding disability inclusion. 

FAQ: The Top Questions Asked About Hotel Accessibility – Part 1

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very open and light lobby with chairs, table
First impressions matter, particularly in the hospitality business!

Where to start—it’s the question we get when asked about making hotels more accessible. Our suggestion: Start with the very first questions a traveler may have, even before they park their car. Think parking and elevators, signage and ramps.

The 20 questions, below, are adapted from a list on the ADA’s Checklist for Existing Facilities which was created by the New England ADA Center, a project of the Institute for Human-Centered Design.

Don’t stop reading here. Why? Because the intersection of design and hospitality is not nearly as eye-glazing as you might imagine. It gets pretty interesting, especially when you begin to get everyone on the same page when thinking about bigger concepts, such as universal design. Many DMO’s we’ve spoken to said they have created an Accessibility Committee, filling it with representatives from all departments to work across silos.

Accessing the Hotel & The Room

  1. How many accessible parking spaces are available?
  2. How Many Van Accessible Parking Spaces are Available 
  3. Are there any steps to the entrance of the Hotel?
  4. Is there an alternative accessible entrance?
  5. Is there a manual door at the entrance?
  6. How wide is the entry door?
  7. Is there a low counter at reception?
  8. Is there a wheelchair accessible bathroom in the lobby? 
  9. What is the door measurement in the accessible lobby bathroom?
  10. Is there an elevator? If so….
  11. What is the width of the elevator door?
  12. Is there a voice announcement in the elevator?
  13. Are there raised letters/numbers or braille on elevator buttons?
  14. How high is the highest floor button in the elevator?
  15. Are there signs directing people to the accessible entrance?
  16. What is the floor surface in the lobby? If it is carpet how thick is it?
  17. Does the accessible entrance provide direct access to the main floor and lobby 
  18. Are guide dogs and support animals welcome?
  19. IS there level or ramped access to the hotel bar?
  20. IS there level or ramped access to hotel dining areas?

Listening Tour Notes From our Founder: “Oakland Speaks Its Mind and We Listen to Their Awesome Questions”

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TravelAbility 2020 listening tour
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As Listening Tours tend to do, our recent Oakland roundtable raised some smart questions and pushed us to think about accessibility, tech, disability and the travel industry in even deeper ways. It also motivated many of our colleagues to take the fear of compliance and turn it into action. Here are a few of the items of interest during our Oakland, CA, meeting.

  1. Pam Wright of Point Hospitality told the group about using the AccessiBE app to make all six of their hotel websites compliant. The motivation for this action was to deter lawsuits.  Point Hospitality will work with TravelAbility to design an “Accessible FAQ” page on their website as a model that can be used by others that will include accessible room specs as well as images.
  2. Astrid Johannessen of Alcatraz Cruises told the group about the new Bay cruise initiative with the National Park Service (NPS) that will feature a full range of accessibility options including audio description and assistive hearing devices. NPS holds an annual training session at Fort Mason. One of the desired outcomes is to get front line staff to be more pro-active.
  3. Jake Steinman, Founder, TravelAbility Summit brought the group up to speed on some of the industry news that will be impacting the next TravelAbility Summit. On the table: Expedia is expanding their Diversity & Inclusion program beyond its internal employee focus to an external effort that includes customers. 
  4. The concept of shared values seems to be trending in destination marketing. Many are working to understand the needs of their communities and providing accessibility solutions locally. The Think Differently Pledge in Dutchess County took this approach and has over 60 different municipalities who signed their pledge and committed to making their communities inclusive for all. TravelAbility is working on a sample pledge that DMO’s can use with their hotel and attraction partners.
  5. Toby Willis from Expedia recently joined the TravelAbility Advisory Board and there may be opportunities to collaborate with them on scenario-based training videos.
  6. Art Jimenez is positioning the Reno Sparks CVB as the driving force behind accessibility and working with a group in Truckee –Hi5’s – an organization of adaptive sports athletes. The CVB will be highlighting individual athletes in their social media campaigns.

Thanks to all who attended including Astrid Johannessen, Alcatraz Cruises; Bonnie Lewkowicz, BORP; Pam Wright, Point Hospitality; Laszlo Horvath, Active Media; Elaine Schroth, Visit Concord; Jake Steinman, Tricia Roth,  TravelAbility Summit; Art Jimenez, Reno-Tahoe: Tracy Harris, Reno Tahoe

Motivated by Mom: Q&A with accessibleGo Founder Miriam Eljas

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Miriam and her mom Emma (seating wearing bright pink. Their faces are close together posed.
Founder Miriam Eljas and her mom.

We caught up with one of the most forward-thinking women in the travel industry and asked her our top 10 questions:

1. What is the service accessibleGO provides?
accessibleGO offers bookings, reviews, resources, and community. We take the travel experience and break it up into three parts: Plan, Reserve, and Share. When you are planning, you can look up content like which museums allow visitors who are blind to touch exhibits or local resources such as service providers like accessible transportation or equipment rental. You can book with confidence by relying on our accessibility reviews, accessibility data, and personalized customer service to confirm your accessibility requests. After your trip, you can pay it forward by contributing reviews, answering questions in our forum or writing a blog about your experience. 

How does it work? 
Our booking experience is currently focused on U.S. hotels and enables our users to filter and compare accessibility features and accessibility reviews.  When booking, you can fill out whatever accessibility requirements you have.  With this information in hand, our customer service team then contacts the hotel or travel service provider to make sure your accessibility needs will be met. If you encounter any issues before or even during your stay, our team is available to contact the property’s manager on your behalf. We will soon be expanding our current booking capabilities for car rentals and flights to showcase accessibility as well.

2. What need does accessibleGO address? 
The problems that people with disabilities face when traveling usually revolve around information—either they are getting inaccurate accessibility information or they’re not able to find any accessibility information in advance. Until now there was no [online]  platform where the community could share information about accessible travel experiences for everyone’s benefit. Our platform is built upon a foundation of accessibility data.

3. What is your origin story and what phase of the start-up life cycle are you currently in?
I started accessibleGO because of my mother, Emma Eljas, who had MS. Growing up in Silicon Valley with a parent who was a wheelchair user, we constantly encountered situations where knowing about the accessibility in advance would have made all the difference. I remember when I was a teenager I wanted to go to the movies with my mother. We called in advance and a well-meaning staff person informed us the theater was accessible with a ramp. When we arrived, we discovered there were stairs everywhere. Their concept of a ramp? A cracked piece of thin plywood. After that, I promised myself that I would eventually start a company that would prevent these miscommunications. After working in venture capital and selling my media company in NYC, I cofounded accessibleGO with our CTO Jeffrey Schlanger and VP Strategic Planning Galia Kut.

People are using accessibleGO.com to research and book travel plans, identify local services as well as connect with others.

—MIRIAM ELJAS

After several consumer beta tests to assess the market and test the product, we are ready to scale up operations. Our priority will be to make our platform more feature-rich and to expand globally.

4. From where do you obtain your hotel supply?
We are part of the Priceline Partner Network, so we have access to all the inventory from their system, including booking.com, agoda.com and others. We are gathering accessibility data for hotels across the U.S., with close to 5,000 hotels to date and up to 40 data points per hotel. When you look up hotels in our system, we display accessibility data whenever available. That may be a roll-in shower, step-free entrance, Braille signage, bed height or visual notification devices. 

Hotels have the ability to log in and publish their accessibility information. Our team is doing outreach to onboard hotels to upload their data. We are on schedule to cover a majority of hotels in the USA within the next 2 years.

5. How many hotels are in your system in North America?  Worldwide?In North America, there are over 50,000 hotels, worldwide about 200,000.

6. What is your business model? Our revenue comes primarily from booking commissions.  

7. How many consumers do you have in your system? 
60,000, mostly from a 5-month consumer beta test.

8. What makes you unique from competitors such as Expedia, Handiscover, Booking.com etc.?
The site has filters for over 40 accessibility data points, reviews that are exclusively about accessibility and a travel forum to check with community members about any aspect of your travel planning and get inspired. This is not available on mainstream travel sites. When you book with accessibleGO, our team personally calls the hotel, confirms your requirements will be met and even gets the name of the hotel staffer verifying the accessibility and sends you a confirmation email. This is a fundamental part of our business model.

9. How do you plan to build demand and usage?
A big part of our model is happy customers and viral growth. Check out our ‘thank you’ wall here.  

Through partnerships with non-profit organizations that serve people with disabilities, we are expanding our consumer base and building a real community. Paid online advertising has also proved effective through market testing and we plan to continue these efforts as we grow.

10. Can you provide insights on the destinations that your users are searching for? 
At first, we assumed that the most popular destinations in the U.S. would be of the most interest to our community (Orlando, New York or Las Vegas). So we based our hotel accessibility data, travel content and trip resources around the top 30 cities. However, when we ran a consumer beta test on bookings, we were surprised to discover the exact opposite. The bookings were not for popular vacation spots. For example, while 15% of bookings were in Florida, they were not in Florida’s biggest hot spots.

We found that 85% of our bookings are outside the top 30 cities in the U.S. including cities like Independence, MO, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg TN and Fort Lauderdale, FL.  Many people were traveling for family visits, doctor appointments or small trips for personal reasons, not grand vacations in big cities.  We also noticed a pattern for medical visits, with bookings to Rochester, MN where the Mayo Clinic is located as well as near Houston’s Texas Medical Center.

Accessible Hotel Design Doesn’t Have to Be Boring and Unsexy

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A peek at the future of accessible hotel design. courtesy: Hotel Brooklyn

Hotels are challenging pre-existing attitudes towards accessibility in design in 2020 and will focus more on meaningful spaces for modern travelers, according to HotelDesign.net. An exclusive panel discussion at their upcoming U.K. Summit will give delegates an unprecedented insight into the design decisions involved in the creation of a 189-key standard-bearer, Hotel Brooklyn. READ MORE.

Our take: The Hotel Summit’s decision to lead with accessibility at their 2020 conference is spot on. Operational standards will always be the rules to play by, but the industry trend is toward more design and aesthetic freedom than ever before. We are watching the evolution of accessibility, which will become a significant chunk of the market in which 1 billion people are aging into the next stage of life—with the money and interest in traveling. 

Hotel Designs to put ‘accessibility’ under the spotlight at Hotel Summit 2020