TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

Advisory Board

Wunderman Thompson Agency Hires Global Director of Accessibility to Create More Adaptive Products

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Headshot of Josh Loebner

Congratulations to Josh Loebner, a prominent member of TravelAbility’s Advisory Board. No sooner had he successfully completed his Ph.D. in marketing to people with disabilities from George Washington University, than he was recruited by Wunderman Thompson, one of the world’s largest marketing agencies, as their Global Head of Inclusive Design. There, he will not only be helping major multi-national brands include accessible imaging in their advertising, but he will also work to design and develop adapted versions of their products.

To read more about Loebner’s new role, click here

Kudos to Marc Garcia on Winning US Travel’s “Destiny” Award

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Marc Garcia headshot.

Congratulations to TravelAbility Advisory Board member Marc Garcia, CEO, Visit Mesa, on winning the U.S. Travel Industry Association’s DESTINY Award in the special projects category at this week’s ESTO conference in Los Angeles. The honor recognized the extraordinary work his team has done in advancing accessibility and diversity.

It is the first time in the history of the award that anyone has been recognized in the category of accessibility and diversity.  Not exactly a walk on the moon, but…One small step for US Travel, one giant leap for legitimizing accessibility as an aspirational goal to the industry.

Congratulations, Marc!

TravelAbility Revises Its Vision and Purpose

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The TravelAbility team and the Advisory Board recently met to discuss what the organization has accomplished and a vision for the future. The result of our conversations is a revised mission statement.

TravelAbility Summit logo.

Our Vision is to become a prominent thought leader in accessible travel to improve the lives of people at ALL abilities and ALL ages.

Our Purpose is to inspire and educate the travel industry to provide accessible experiences to help people with disabilities enjoy travel as much as everyone else.

Our Goals are to help travel organizations:

  1. Easily incorporate Accessibility into Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
  2. Change the perception of people with disabilities from that of a compliance headache to an advanced form of guest service.
  3. Promote the bottom-line benefits of accessibility to businesses. For example, baby boomers are a high-spending group who hopes to travel, and accessible travel will attract boomers with assistance needs.

Our history and successes to date

Since we launched TravelAbility in 2019, we’ve been busy. Our first conference was in 2019, and we’ve grown exponentially since then. Check out:

  • Over 3,000 readers of the TravelAbility Insider newsletter.
  • The “Explorable” podcast series, in collaboration with Design Sensory, is up to 9 episodes.
  • Our accessible landing page initiative will launch with 41 destinations.
  • LaunchPad, the world’s only pitchfest that showcases adaptive technology and innovations designed to ease the impact of barriers during the travel experience.
  • Our website has been revamped as an online ecosystem that aggregates all the resources in one place that can help any travel organization become more accessible.

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. 

A Free Presentation From DesignSensory: Advertising Targeting Disabled Travelers

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a slide that says toolkit for destination, ongoing research, creative assets and campaign inclusion
courtesy Josh Loebner, DesignSensory

For the past few months, TravelAbility has been offering a free download of the highest-rated presentations from TravelAbility Summit. This month we’re featuring the presentation, “Advertising Targeting Disabled Travelers” from Josh Loebner, director of strategy at DesignSensory, here.  We’ve also given you the presentation in a nutshell, including key learnings and links to previous Summit presentations, below.  

o  Presentation in a Nutshell Designsensory lays out a plan for operationalizing tourism advertising.

o   Key Learnings In 2018, less than 20 national brands included disability portrayals in integrated campaigns

If You Missed Last Month’s Free Presentation on Boomers from AARP You Can Find it here.