TravelAbility 2022

The following summary represents answers to our questionnaire from 53.7% of registered attendees and provides several insights and comments that we would like to share with the TravelAbility community.

Following TravelAbility, how did your experience at the event make you feel about your work?

1. Much Better: 38.9%
2. Better: 33.6
3. About the same: 19.4
4. Worse: 5.6
5. None of the above: 2.8

Insight: Nearly three out of four attendees reported that they felt better about their work having attended TravelAbility.   In several interviews attendees stated that the reason they felt better about their work was they felt they were able to help people.

Overall, How would you rate your experience at TravelAbility EMS-2022 on 1-5 scale: 4.4

Top 3 Presentations Day 1:

1. Influencer Marketing and Accessibility: Joey Bell and Chelsea Bear
2. (tie) My Life as Coda, Mark Jones, Walt Disney World;  Wheel The World, Camilo Navarro
3. Aira, Marty Watts

Insight: Social media marketing through the disability influencer is an appealing path to promoting an organization’s accessibility features and commitment.

Top 3 Presentations Day 2:

1. John Morris, Shower Shaming: Why 80% of bathrooms are inaccessible for bathing.
2. Sasha Blair Goldensohn, Making 55 million places accessible on Google Maps
3. Stuart Butler, CMO, Visit Myrtle Beach. Autism Awareness Month promotion.

Insight: Attendees felt a combination of outrage, empathy and awe after listening to presenters who shared their experiences.

On a 1-10 scale, how likely are you to refer others to the next TravelAbility EMS Summit?

Average for all respondents: 8.92

Insight: This is what is called the Net Promotional Score (the number of “promoters” minus the number   “detractors.” A score of 5.0-7.0 is excellent in the travel industry 8.92 is astonishingly high and due primarily to the quality of speakers.

What Were Your Primary Takeaways?

1. Was able to become familiar with multiple programs/apps that can assist some of the clients I work with in planning their travel and met some wonderful people that are helping to further advance this area. One idea for improvement – can you provide a way in registration to note if we have any mobility considerations for being able to fully enjoy & attend the offsite programs or advise in registration what isn’t handled by EMS? the busses provided to take us to Disney because none that I saw were accessible.
2. I really enjoyed hearing about the new products/programs that are out to aid destinations in becoming more accessible. I think a lot of DMO’s are doing some great work and seeing these DMO’s use the services provided helps to give other DMO’s insight as to how it would work for their location. I would love to see more sessions that have groups or tables work together. The conference has a smaller attendance so I think finding ways to have the attendees interact on a small workshop would be beneficial! This could be a social media campaign plan creation, website layout discussion, etc. Just more chances to mingle and mix with the other attendees during the conference.
3. More than just the intersections at which they come together, the OVERLAP and LAYERING that accessibility, DEI and sustainability hold with one another is true incredible. Feeling more inspired and feeling more confident (both in work product and asking questions).
4. The resources that are available to assist DMO’s. Working on Landing Page now. And have connected Marketing Digital Media with Chelsea Bear. Great summit.
5. Attending really made me think about my company, what we’re doing, and what we really need to do more of. This was an educational, eye-opening summit that taught me a lot. I think my biggest complaint is that it seemed like there was too much packed into the schedule. I’d prefer to see and hear from less speakers rather than cramming them into two days. Having to keep up with time, intros in between, etc. took away time and took away from the points the speakers were making. It was super useful and a great variety but I believe less is more.
6. I was very encouraged by the advocates and innovators who attended. I would have loved more time for networking and application to my destination with the experts who were there. I would love more focus on accessibility in outdoor recreation and in rural areas.
7. A few takeaways: – A large number of travelers identify with some kind of disability. – There is a ton of technology and programs that can be duplicated/used in our destinations – Success in these projects benefits the local community, visitors and destination as a whole. Next year I would love to see less presentations so that we have more time to discuss topics and ideas at our tables. It did feel pretty rushed and I feel like a lot of the presenters weren’t able to go deeper into their topics and kept ‘skimming’ over things to get it done in time. I think it would also be amazing to have a marketplace where we could talk to the companies selling mobi mats, scooters, software, etc.
8. Hello. It was a wonderful conference. Thank you for putting it together. I took a lot of notes. First thing I will be doing is building out a dedicated landing page/section on our www.VisitFortMyers.com website for accessibility. What we currently have is just a link in our footer that goes directly to John Morris’s website, where he recaps his visit to Fort Myers last summer – which is great information, but by no means exhaustive.
9. Thanks for the opportunity and I’m so glad I was asked to go to this conference. I feel as inspired and full of energy as I’ve felt in a long time!  Getting the opportunity to experience this new area of inspirational growth and opportunity was awesome.
10. I’m looking forward to sharing so much of the content with the rest of our team and stakeholders.  Additionally, super proud of our Oregon colleagues! For newcomers into this space of our industry (like me), one suggestion I have is to create a list of terms and acronyms and make it available online,  i.e. – sensory-friendly/seeking, CODA, neuro-diverse.
11. I really enjoyed hearing about the new products/programs that are out to aid destinations in becoming more accessible. I think a lot of DMO’s are doing some great work and seeing these DMO’s use the services provided helps to give other DMO’s insight as to how it would work for their location. I would love to see more sessions that have groups or tables work together.”
12. “More than just the intersections at which they come together, the OVERLAP and LAYERING that accessibility, DEI and sustainability hold with one another is true incredible. Feeling more inspired and feeling more confident (both in work product and asking questions).”
13. “Attending really made me think about my company, what we’re doing, and what we really need to do more of. This was an educational, eye-opening summit that taught me a lot.”
14. “First thing I will be doing is building out a dedicated landing page/section on our website for accessibility.”
15. “I feel as inspired and full of energy as I’ve felt in a long time! We spoke briefly this week, but my first introduction to you was around the year 2000 when I started in tourism with the then Salt Lake CVB (now Visit Salt Lake). I then first attended in ETourism Summit in 2004 or 2005 in Chicago (if my memory serves) and then again in San Francisco one or two times after 2010 once I moved to the Oregon tourism world. As such, getting the opportunity to experience this new area of inspirational growth and opportunity was awesome.”

TravelAbility LaunchPad

Judges’ Winners:

1. Wheel the World
2. Revolve Air Wheel

People’s Choice (Ranking based on Survey Results)

1. The Talking Menu, CL Designs
2. Black Restaurant Weeks
3. Access Outdoors
4. Bird
5. CAN

These images from the TravelAbility Emerging Markets Summit in Orlando, Florida, sourced from attendees’ social media posts, highlight the dynamic connections and learnings that attendees experienced. We’re eager to see how you will make a difference in promoting greater accessibility for disabled people in travel.