The Role of Technology in the Leisure Travel of Disabled Travelers

Executive Summary and Recommendations

The persons with physical disabilities are normally regarded as individuals with physical impairments that limit one or more of activities of life, such as walking, speaking, watching and traveling. However, similar with others without disabilities, the disabled people also have interests in traveling to enrich their lives. The application of technology increasingly plays a significant role in traveling of the disabled travelers, and the advance of technology can be divided into two aspects: the information technologies and the technological facilities. Before the disabled travelers make traveling decisions, the internet can provide them with much useful information by avoiding mobility and communication barriers. Furthermore, those advanced technological facilities to a large extent can enable the disabled travelers to enjoy the trip.

1. The disabled travelers, as one of the most particular segments of marketing, most of them may encounter mobility and communication impairment. Marketers of the tourism industry should have a comprehensive understanding about this segment and try their best to meet the disabled travelers' requirements by designing marketing strategies.

2. The marketers should further segment the disabled travelers since the types of disabilities and the requirements of assistant devices are diverse. Segmenting the disabled travelers can improve the service quality based on their needs and wants.

3. Those relative organizations (hotels, theme parks, etc.) should keep closely connective with the disabled travelers by inviting them to design services and contributing their feedbacks to the services offered (Burnett, 1996).

4. Since the high consumption of accessing assistant devices may limit the benefits of advanced technology, those relative organizations should make efforts to reduce the costs and benefit more disabled travelers.

Introduction and problem definition

The previous studies about consumer behavior may tend to ignore the disabled customers, and insufficiency of academic research regarding decision-making process in travel by the persons with physical disabilities has been an international situation (Daniels, 2005). However, many organizations in the travel industry have realized the significance of the disabled as a valuable segment and make efforts on understanding of the travel decision-making process of individuals with physical disabilities. Subsequently, the marketers from the travel industry find that the advance in technology will increasingly play a significant role in affecting the disabled consumer engagement. As a result, our research will concentrate on how those technologies facilitate and limit the disabled customers' engagement in travel associated with the decision-making process.

What is a disability? This is the first