TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

VIRTUAL2020

Why We Postponed TravelAbility Summit

by

Jake standing with a microphone talking to audience members seated at :Llaunchpad event

We have some sad news. Despite the six months of promotion and awareness, registrations for TravelAbility 2020 have been alarmingly slow. Our team spent the past week phoning last year’s attendees and our Advisory Board members—our most enthusiastic supporter base— to find out if they were planning to register for this year’s conference. The results were not exactly surprising, given the state of the travel industry.

Here’s what we heard: Because there is no real end in sight to Covid-19 and with travel happening in fits and starts, their budgets – or what’s left of them – are being placed on hold until there is a clear end in sight. Some destinations have been barred from spending money unless it generates revenues in the short term, and one advisory board member told me that they need approval for even a $20 expenditure. The industry is in survival mode.

When faced with challenges and obstacles, many in the disability community are resilient, adaptable and resolute. I’ve seen those characteristics first-hand in my listening tours across the country, one-on-one conversations and at the amazing inaugural conference we had in 2019. We understand the current realities, but also appreciate the chance to continue conversations and commitments throughout the coming year. 

Although we’re postponing the Summit until the fall of 2021, we will continue to work on advancing accessibility in following ways:

  • Launching our newly redesigned website as an information hub and repository for accessible travel information
  • The Explorable podcast, launched last month in collaboration with Design Sensory, will feature many of the innovative companies and speakers in upcoming episodes.
  • TravelAbility Insider, the Summit’s companion online newsletter will be published bi-monthly.
  • Monthly or bi-monthly webinars featuring some of the most inspiring presenters we recruited for TravelAbility 2020
  • The Landing Page Initiative: Helping the travel industry advance accessibility by adding accessible landing pages to their websites..

As a result of the postponement, we will miss the opportunity to gather and create new allies. So many people left last year’s TravelAbility Summit inspired to promote accessibility and inclusion!

Thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you at our upcoming webinars. 

Coming Soon: The TravelAbility Landing Page Tracker. If you are destination, hotel or attraction with a dedicated accessible web page and would like to become part of the Landing Page Project, please contact me at jake@travelabilitysummit.com

Important Announcement: Introducing the TravelAbility Tuesday Series

by

TravelAbility Summit logo

In the last issue of TravelAbility Insider, we announced that TravelAbility Summit would be held virtually for 3 hours a day during the week of November 9-13th.  Since that time, we had the experience of producing the Parakeet Pop Up, a virtual conference about virtual conferences that functioned as a practice event for TravelAbility Summit. We also held our quarterly advisory board meeting where we shared our experiences from that event.

The board overwhelmingly felt that holding the Summit every day for a week would discourage THEM from attending and probably others as well. As a result, we decided the least disruptive approach would be to spread TravelAbility out over a five-week period. Each Tuesday from November 10th to December 8th, we will present programming from 9:00-12:00 pm PDT, followed by 30-minutes of networking time. Recordings of all sessions will also be available to registrants on-demand.

Register for the TravelAbility Tuesday Series – TravelAbility Summit to be held over 5 consecutive Tuesdays beginning November 10 and ending December 8th. All sessions will be virtual from 9:00-12:00 PDT. The TravelAbility Tuesday Series will pick up again on consecutive Tuesdays from February 2-18, 2021 as three one hour “train-the-trainer” workshops. 

Early bird registration for all 8 sessions is $595. Here’s what’s included:

  • Insights from five days of content with over 60 presenters
  • Three post-event train-the-trainer workshops
  • Recordings for all sessions

Click here for speakers (to date).

Click here for the Agenda.

Click here to register.

What Would TravelAbility Summit look like as NetFlix Series? TravelAbility Week!

by

Going all-virtual this year inspired our team to do even more to meet you where you are and help you avoid information overload. (You may even have some fun!). We’re emulating Netflix and calling this second annual gathering “Season 2”. Attendees will have the ability to choose the number of episodes they want to watch—or binge watch it all live November 9 to 13, 2020. (Season 1 was 2019). The themes this year is Advancing Accessibility and episodes will include “How We Did it.” How  DMO’s, hotels, attractions, and airports are advancing accessibility by creating  landing pages on their website with precisely the information people with a wide range of disabilities need.  Other sessions include: Nothing Dirty Here: Products and Services for Pandemic-proofing, Pure Genius! Assistive Technology and more. You can find the agenda, here. And find coverage of the event, on Marketing News.

Of all the virtual events out there, why attend TravelAbility Week? Consumers and their travel expectations are changing 56 million potential travelers have a disability—and 2020 is the year to begin showing them they are important to you. “While the patchwork of closing has paused marketing campaign, we’re using this time to build the informational infrastructure that will be needed by 

If we’re accessible for people who are disabled today, we’ll all be accessible for the 75 million Baby Boomers who will be aging into a disability tomorrow.
 
—Jake Steinman, Founder, TravelAbilitySummit.com

OUR TAKE A generation of Baby Boomers who refuse to accept age as a barrier will create a new category of products, disrupt the transportation industry, and more,” says Steinman. Find the agenda for new TravelAbility week, just posted here.

Meet Parakeet and Learn Dozens of Virtual Conference Hacks in One Day

by

THE MEETING FOR VIRTUAL MEETING PLANNERS

New Event Space—the digital one. This virtual one stop shop event will be held on September 10th and 11th. Originally conceived as a dress rehearsal for TravelAbility Week, the goal is to help meeting planners plan smarter and make their events sing. As readers of this newsletter you know, TravelAbility comes at a crucial time. Instead of white- knuckling it through the upcoming months, we’re helping the travel industry prepare to attract 77 million baby boomers who will be aging into a disability over the next decade. In a nutshell, here’s our mission for the event. PARAKEET will: 

  • Reduce confusion by inviting the top platforms and API’s to demo based on unique features
  • Showcase cutting-edge tech that best replicates human engagement.
  • Highlight the most creative ways other organizers have used platforms

Now all you need to do is tell a colleague about us! You can find news about Parakeet (including a downloadable list of the 112 virtual conference platforms we researched and an explanation of the methodology) here.   

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Your name and email will never be sold to third parties.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Your name and email will never be sold to 3rd parties.