From tourism and disability to accessible tourism: a perspective article

Purpose This paper aims to examine the development of disability and tourism to the conceptualising and defining of accessible tourism. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a limited review of the literature as its main approach. Findings In reviewing the development of the field from disability and tourism to accessible tourism, it became apparent that there has been a change in focus on the accessibility of the key sectors of tourism (e.g. transport, accommodation and attractions) to incorporating an embodied understanding of tourism in developing accessible destination experiences that provide an equality of offering to that of nondisabled tourists. Originality/value This paper makes a contribution by clearly following the development of the field from papers that only considered tourism and disability to conceptualise and define the accessible tourism field. It then goes on to identify a significant challenge due to an underlying empirical data gap through a lack of nationally and regionally collected tourism data that incorporates disability questions.