Numbers of People with Disabilities who Travel: Disability and tourism statistics

A lot of people ask me “how many people with disabilities travel?”. From a research perpective, there is no definitive answer to this question. There are however estimates firmly based in the research literature and then there are guestimates. My suggestion for maintaining credibility with the industry is to be very wary of “guestimates” (anecdotal reports) and to stick strictly to what has been verified in the research literature. For example, when I was doing my PhD in the area (Darcy, 2004) the figure that everybody referenced was Durgin, Lindsay, and Hamilton (1985) who referred to secondary data of the 35 million Americans with disabilities and "estimated" that 13 percent of all travellers in the US had some form of ‘handicap’. Yet, when I went to the publication they had "guessed" that this would be the case and had not carried out any empirical work to validate this figure.

Photo 1: Types of Disability of those Travelling in Australia (Source: Dwyer & Darcy, 2008)

The main early study was Woodside and Etzel (1980) who undertook the first empirical study on disability and tourism that sought to discover the role of physical and mental conditions on tourism vacation behaviour. The survey found that 10 percent of the 590 respondents to a household survey in the US State of South Carolina who had gone on a trip had a member of their party with a ‘physical or mental condition’. They concluded that while the demographic characteristics of those travelling did not vary significantly from other households, that those with a person with a disability had lower level of travel than the general population.

For a summary of the literature see pages 5-6 and Chapter 4 pp21-32 in the following is publication (Darcy, et al., 2008). This was written and researched with the preeminent tourism economist Professor Larry Dwyer. 
Darcy, S., Cameron, B., Dwyer, L., Taylor, T., Wong, E., & Thomson, A. (2008), Technical Report 90040: Visitor accessibility in urban centre. Gold Coast: Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre. http://www.crctourism.com.au/BookShop/BookDetail.aspx?d=626

This work presented a detailed methodology for assessing the economic contribution of tourists with disabilities based on nationally collected data on their travel patterns. Only the Australia government's Bureau of Tourism Research (2003 now Tourism Research Australia) have collected data at a national level that allows comparison between the rates of travel for people with disabilities and the general population. The above study was based on these figures. It also shows the complexity when understanding that of this study estimated that about 11% of Australians travelling with in Australia (domestic holidaymakers) have a disability. Figure 1 presents a breakdown of the types of disability that travellers identified that they had. This proportion dropped significantly for those travelling internationally. That is where the complexity lies when trying to estimate the proportion of travellers with disabilities as part of inbound markets. The other excellent data set is from the US Open Doors Organisation (HarrisInteractive Market Research, 2003, 2005) both our study and these studies suggests that about 7% international travellers have some form of disability. However, these travellers have lower levels of support needs than domestic travellers. 



There are also studies that seek to make the economic impact of travellers with disabilities of which the above study did as well. However, most of these other studies use gross demand estimates rather than undertaking direct empirical work about the consumer behaviour of people with disabilities tourism participation and patterns. For example Neuman and Reuber’s

(2004) estimated German tourists make a €2.5 billion contribution to the economy where the European Union countries’ OSSATE research estimated that tourists with disabilities contribute €80 billion to the economy using gross demand estimates (Buhalis, Michopoulou, Eichhorn, & Miller, 2005). More recently VisitEngland has collected data that suggests

“overnight trips made by, or accompanied by, someone with a health condition or impairment contributed almost £1bn to the English domestic visitor economy in the first 6 months of the year, accounting for 5.7 million trips in total. These latest figures highlight the importance of considering people with access needs, who in the year to June 2009 have accounted for 12% of all overnight domestic trips” (ENAT, 2009).

This report has the potential of making a valuable contribution to the field and we look forward to public release.

For a detailed examination of the research literature see pages 89-96 of
Darcy, Simon 2004, Disabling Journeys: The social relations of tourism for people with impairments in Australia – an explanation of people with impairments’ experiences through the discourses of government tourism authorities and the tourism industry, Unpublished Ph.D Thesis, Faculty of Business, University of Technology, Sydney. http://utsescholarship.lib.uts.edu.au/iresearch/scholarly-works/handle/2100/260

For an introduction to understanding the accessible tourism market see

Darcy, S. (2006), Setting a Research Agenda for Accessible  Tourism, Gold Coast: Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre.http://www.crctourism.com.au/BookShop/BookDetail.aspx?d=473

References

Buhalis, D., Michopoulou, E., Eichhorn, V., & Miller, G. (2005). Accessibility market and stakeholder analysis - One-Stop-Shop for Accessible Tourism in Europe (OSSATE). Surrey, United Kingdom: University of Surrey.

Bureau of Tourism Research (2003). National visitor survey: travel by Australians Retrieved 10 September, 2007, from www.btr.gov.au

Darcy, S. (2004). Disabling Journeys: the Social Relations of Tourism for People with Impairments in Australia - an analysis of government tourism authorities and accommodation sector practices and discourses, Faculty of Business Available from http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/handle/2100/260

Darcy, S. (2006). Setting a Research Agenda for Accessible Tourism. In C. Cooper, T. D. LacY & L. Jago (Eds.), STCRC Technical Report Seriespp. 48). Available from http://www.crctourism.com.au/BookShop/BookDetail.aspx?d=473

Darcy, S., Cameron, B., Dwyer, L., Taylor, T., Wong, E., & Thomson, A. (2008). Technical Report 90064: Visitor accessibility in urban centrespp. 75). Available from http://www.crctourism.com.au/BookShop/BookDetail.aspx?d=626

Durgin, R. W., Lindsay, N., & Hamilton, F. (1985). A Guide to Recreation, Leisure and Travel for the Handicapped Volume 2: Travel and Transportation. Toledo, Ohio: Resource Directories.

ENAT (2009). UK Tourism Firms Encouraged to Improve Accessibility Retrieved 26 December, 2009, from http://www.accessibletourism.org/?i=enat.en.news.713

HarrisInteractive Market Research (2003). Research among adults with disabilities - travel and hospitality. Chicago: Open Doors Organization.

HarrisInteractive Market Research (2005). Research among adults with disabilities - travel and hospitality. Chicago: Open Doors Organization.

Neumann, P., & Reuber, P. (2004). Economic Impulses of Accessible Tourism for All (Vol. 526). Berlin: Study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology & Federal Ministry of Economic and Labour (BMWA).

Woodside, A. G., & Etzel, M. J. (1980). Impact of physical and mental handicaps on vacation travel behaviour. Journal of Travel Research, 18(3), 9-11.