Greater Travel Accessibility Equals More Money With Dr. Scott Rains

Editor’s Note: The real key to success is taking your disability and turning it into an advantage- it’s about what you can do, not what you cannot do. In the story of Dr. Scott Rains, a consultant on travel and disability, you’ll see that his wheelchair has become his marketing tool. Dr. Rains, “New Mobility” magazine’s Person of the Year, is known worldwide for opening up many countries, businesses and vacation sites to physically challenged individuals and has enabled these places to become more inclusive. Part 5 of a 5 part series.

Right now, I’m working with the Rick Hansen Foundation in Vancouver, Canada, that works with spinal cord research. In May of 2012, we’re hosting an international conference to mark the 25^thanniversary of Rick Hansen going around the world in his push wheelchair. People to donated to the foundation. When he arrived home, he learned that $26 million had been donated, which had two main focuses: a cure for spinal cord injury and the elimination of political barriers and physical accessibility.

Just because you have a disability doesn't mean you can't go wherever you want!

The conference is called Interdependence 2012 Conference and Exposition and will be held May 15-18 in Vancouver. Half of the conference will focus on cures for spinal cord injuries and will feature speakers who are doctors and medical researchers. The other half of the conference will be on physical accessibility, which is the part of the conference with which I’ll be working on and involved. My focus will be specifically on tourism for people with physical challenges.

There are resources available that detail traveling destinations for the physically challenged. When you look at them, you’ll be overwhelmed at the number of places that you can go and travel to that have made modifications to make their destination much more accessible to not only people in wheelchairs, but people with all types of injuries.

The Rick Hansen Foundation is also currently starting the Global Accessibility Initiative. If you do a Google search on the Rick Hansen Global Accessibility Initiative, you’ll see a map tool where individuals who travel can add their own comments on where they’ve gone, what they’ve done, and how accessible this destination was for them. 

What we’re hoping for is that the entire travel industry will make accessibility a part of the education, information and advertising in the way that they market their destinations and/or venues.

People with disabilities should be well informed and educated about places they plan to visit.

We want to help the travel industry make travel easier for disabled people. And, if we travel more, they’ll make more money. The map tool that the Rick Hansen Foundation created will allow people to comment on their trip. When you see a location marked on the map, and click on that location, our hope is you’ll be able to read comments from a physically challenged person who can say, “Been there, done that.”

What we’re really striving for is for physically-challenged people to be recognized and included in the travel industry worldwide as a market that destinations and venues want to promote and advertise to and provide services and benefits for these people. I believe that one of the problems is that most companies don’t realize how much money that people with disabilities spend each year worldwide on travel.

Often corporations may consider the physically challenged because of the ADA, which requires them to have accessible rooms, but they forget to inform everyone.  Have you noticed that travel agencies or venues don’t show disabled people enjoying their facilities? Consequently, when we’re searching for a place to go and can’t find any information about the accessibility of that destination, we’ll have to travel to somewhere else. We’ll go to a different destination that does a better job of advertising accessibility.

The more accessible, the better.

When hotels and destinations begin to realize that the physically challenged are potential customers and say, “Let’s make this information available,” then they’ll include that information that they send out to travel agencies. That information needs to be available to everyone in the travel agency business. We want the travel industry to not only say, “We’ve made our facilities accessible,” but to revel in the fact that they want us to come and spend our money with them.

Scott Rains believes that the more information travel agencies and destinations offer about accessibility, the more money they'll make because disabled people will feel comfortable traveling there.

Two major professional organizations that help disabled people who want to travel are:
* ENAT, the European Network for Accessible Tourism, a project done by the entire European Union.
* SATH, which stands for Society of Accessible Travel and Hospitality in the U.S.

A private company that’s based in Australia is TRAVability. On this website you’ll see these people really have made a case for companies, venues, etc. to consider the physically challenged as a market. They’re making a conscious effort to let the travel industry know what physically challenged people need, and how big our market is. They even go one step further and tell the travel industry how to make money by providing accessibility.

To learn more about Dr. Scott Rains, please visit his blog.

About the Author: For the last 12 years, John E. Phillips of Vestavia, Alabama, has been a professional blogger for major companies, corporations and tourism associations throughout the nation. During his 24 years as Outdoor Editor for “The Birmingham Post-Herald” newspaper, he published more than 7,000 newspaper columns and sold more than 100,000 of his photos to newspapers, magazines and internet sites. He also hosted a radio show that was syndicated at 27 radio stations; created, wrote and sold a syndicated newspaper column that ran in 38 newspapers for more than a decade; and wrote and sold more than 30 books. Learn more at http://www.nighthawkpublications.com

Dr. Scott Rains’ Success In Helping Others with Accessible Travel

Editor’s Note: The real key to success is taking your disability and turning it into an advantage- it’s about what you can do, not what you cannot do. In the story of Dr. Scott Rains, a consultant on travel and disability, you’ll see that his wheelchair has become his marketing tool. Dr. Rains, “New Mobility” magazine’s Person of the Year, is known worldwide for opening up many countries, businesses and vacation sites to physically challengedindividuals and has enabled these places to become more inclusive. Part 4 of a 5 part series.

Scott Rains is a leading advocate for inclusive tourism.

I’ve always noticed that the lodging I went to when I traveled overseas were very customer service oriented. Oftentimes, the manager of the lodging would come and ask me, “What can we do better to make our rooms more accessible for people in wheelchairs?”

Then I talked to them about the standards that we had for disabled people in America, and the building codes that had been put in place in recent years to make sure that people in wheelchairs and with other disabilities were considered when buildings were built. Even outside the U.S., many of the facilities where I stayed were familiar the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and the building codes that had been changed. Also, they were familiar with the Air Carrier Access Act, which covers the needs of people with disabilities on airplanes.

I was doing quite a bit of informal accessibility audits and giving advice to property owners on how they could make their properties more inclusive for all people with disabilities. Next I started being invited to places to speak on this subject as a visiting journalist. A couple of years ago, I was invited to South Africa by three different provinces to look at their tourism products, before the 2010 World Cup soccer match took place. I was also invited to speak to the United Nations in 2007 at a conference in Asia on tourism and disability. The U.N. in Bangkok hosted the meeting.

During the 10 years I decided not to travel and was furthering my education and working for non-profits, I often talked to my wife about all the places I’d gone and the things I’d seen. She became very interested, and we started saving our money. I also noticed that change was taking place in the United States, and more tourist destinations were becoming conscious of the fact that people with disabilities did travel.

The very first trip that I took was to Brazil after my 10 years of not traveling out of the country. During those 10 years, I had gotten a master’s degree in pastoral studies and a doctorate in applied theology, which is called pastoral ministries today. I more or less functioned as a pastor of a church when I was at Benedictine University.

Scott Rains at Toca Waterfalls on Ilhabela in São Paulo state, Brazil getting help from a native.

My particular focus was on service to the community – specifically the alleviation of poverty. I also found that because I was disabled and in a wheelchair, I’d be asked to speak at retreats and frequently asked to write articles for different publications about my experiences as a person with a disability. I spoke on equality of the disabled, and being non-discriminatory and non-prejudiced toward people with disabilities.

All these different jobs and ministries often were taking place at the same time. I was a linguist and a pastor, who also worked in non-profits and spoke and wrote about travel accessibility. I did travel assessments on a wide variety of venues. The non-profits that I worked for had the same values I did, and the values that I believed in came through a very thorough study of the New Testament Gospels. 

Scott Rains is all about helping other people. He posted this photo showing how special that really is.

One of the first things I did publicly was to make a presentation in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil at the International Conference on Universal Design at a conference titled, “Designing for the Twenty First Century.” I did a pre-conference one day workshop on universal design and tourism that people from all over the world attended. Several other people, who had worked in universal design and had backgrounds in tourism, helped me with this one day seminar.

After that conference, I began my work with companies from other countries and put together a team of people I could call on for specific needs of these companies to make suggestions for designs that would make their facilities more inclusion friendly.

To learn more about Dr. Scott Rains, please visit his blog.

Next: Greater Accessibility Means More Money With Dr. Scott Rains

About the Author: For the last 12 years, John E. Phillips of Vestavia, Alabama, has been a professional blogger for major companies, corporations and tourism associations throughout the nation. During his 24 years as Outdoor Editor for “The Birmingham Post-Herald” newspaper, he published more than 7,000 newspaper columns and sold more than 100,000 of his photos to newspapers, magazines and internet sites. He also hosted a radio show that was syndicated at 27 radio stations; created, wrote and sold a syndicated newspaper column that ran in 38 newspapers for more than a decade; and wrote and sold more than 30 books. Learn more at http://www.nighthawkpublications.com