Tourism Services for People With Dissabilities From the Perspective of the Service Provider
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The tourism industry has huge potential to bring huge socio-economic benefits by providing services to disabled travellers (Michalska and Kaczmarek, 2023). There is a need to create more offers for this demographic group, as the needs of people with disabilities are the same as those of all other customers, but organizing tourism for people with disabilities requires more investment and brings fewer economic benefits. The provision of tourism services for people with disabilities poses specific challenges. Depending on the type of disability, there are requirements for the adaptation of infrastructure, the competencies of employees, and measures to ensure the quality of services. Actors in the tourism industry need to recognise these different needs and strive to create a more inclusive and accessible environment. The main tasks for tourism service providers are to improve the infrastructure and adapt it to the needs of different groups of people, to train and prepare employees to serve customers with special needs, to create specially tailored services for the disabled and to integrate into the increasingly growing sector of tourism for the disabled. This is particularly important when the provision of tourism services to people with disabilities will have to be adapted to higher requirements in accordance with the principle of universal design, in order to create tourism conditions adapted to different types of disabilities, be it physical, sensory or mental disabilities. The aim of the study is to examine the tourism services for disabled people through perspective of the service providers. Analysis of scientific literature and documents and qualitative research-interview methods were used to conduct the research. Six persons who organize or are involved in the organization of tourism services for people with disabilities participated in the study, Their practical experience is more than ten years. Results. The analysis of the interview was carried out using the Conten analysis, identified the categories of the researche: types, motives and applications for the provision of services for people with disabilities market for Tourism Services for People with disabilities regulation of tourism services for people with disabilities; problems in organizing tourism services for people with disabilities. Subcategories describing the categories have been identified, problems in the provision of services for people with disabilities have been identified. Conclusion. In the provision of services for the disabled, problems arise in the adaptation of transport, accommodation establishments, the adaptation of visited and other service objects and the need to introduce into the adaptation of infrastructure. Another problem is the lack of a skilled workforce and the additional costs of hiring specialists to provide quality services to people with disabilities. However, despite the additional costs, providers receive a lower profit margin in return and are less motivated to provide services to people with disabilities.
Source: HUMANITIES STUDIES
Institution: Lithuanian Sports University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4413061533