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| Accessible tourism
Main results of the Iter survey on accessible tourism
Accessible tourism is intended as the set of services and facilities capable of allowing persons
with specific needs to enjoy a holiday and their leisure time with no
particular barriers or problems. Individuals with specific needs could be
elderly people, disabled individuals and people with particular diets or with
allergy problems, who need particular comforts and facilitations during their
travels. The definition of tourist covers a large category of people and takes
into consideration all those individuals who declare they have taken at least
one trip during the last year.
Contents of the
survey
The data which this
work is based on are taken from the survey carried out in the period between 31
May – 2 July 1999, by the Iter company commissioned by ENEA, as part of the
STARe “Study of the Demand for Accessible Tourism”. This enquiry is part of the
project “Italia per Tutti” promoted by the Ministry for the Industry (Department
General for Tourism) and realised by ENEA as a tool for the promotion of
holidays for “tourists with special needs”. The complete results of the
survey can be found in the ENEA site at the following Internet address
www.italiapertutti.it/i
mprenditoria.htm
. Following is a
description of the demographic and social features of the tourists with special
needs. It is worthwhile noting that tourists with special needs
should not all be identified as disabled, since this category involves a larger
amount of people than those with disabilities and, vice-versa, not all disabled.
(up) In 1999 about 31
million people took at least one trip a year, amounting to 54.6% of
all the Italian population. Among these, 2.9%, corresponding to 889,330
individuals, were people who expressed special needs. If one wishes to extend
the analysis to tourists who, whilst not expressing any special needs,
nevertheless belong to the higher age class (65 and over), for which it is
assumed that in the majority of cases one chooses to make journeys with
particular characteristics, then the analysis extends to another 2,140,785
tourists, corresponding to 6.9% of the tourists who do not express special
needs. There is also a
considerable number of Italians who do not travel: in 1999 they amounted to
26 million people, equal to 45.4% of Italians. One may ask why it is that
these people do not travel, if it is due to temporary or permanent causes and,
under what conditions they would be willing to travel. We are interested in
focusing on those who do not travel for health reasons or for old age (14.1%
of the individuals who do not travel) and, in particular, on those among these
who, notwithstanding the permanent character of their impairments, have declared
that they are willing to travel if the causes hindering their desire to travel
were removed (1.9% of those who do not travel).
Table 1 – Those who travel and those who do not travel in Italy (1999)
As tourists with special needs, women travel more than men,
contrarily to what happens in the whole universe of tourists.
In fact, among the people with special needs, women
belonging to the older age classes tend to prevail and, from what emerges
through the data, they do not give up travelling.
Graph 1 – Percentage distribution per gender of all tourists and of those with
special needs (1999)
At what age does one travel most? The amount of tourists
aged over 65 years, with special
needs (22.8%) is three times more than those belonging to the same age
group in the overall number of tourists (7.5%), while the amount of youngsters
up to the age of 14 years who travel, both among those who express special
needs and in the overall amount of tourists, is more or less the same
(18.7% and 17.2% respectively). This typical distribution per age of the
tourists with special needs is strongly influenced by the age structure
of all the people who have special needs, namely featuring the elderly as being
the group with most members. Table 2 – Percentage distribution per age of tourists and total number of tourists (1999)
Another characteristic that emerges, which is interesting to study, is the type of
working activity carried out by tourists with special needs. A good
33.6% of them work as employees or teachers, while with respect to the
overall number of tourists, the percentage is 28.1%. Only 5.9% are
entrepreneurs, freelance professionals or managers, whereas in the overall
number of tourists the percentage is double. At this point one can outline the profile of the socio-demographic characteristics of the tourist with special needs, who is prevailingly a woman of medium-old age, working as an employee. One must nevertheless consider the fact that this profile is highly influenced by the socio-demographic features of the individuals with special needs in general, independently from the fact that they travel or not. (up) What are the needs and problems when travelling? One of the first comforting results of the research is the consideration that “not always the emergence of a need encounters a barrier”, that is to say that in most cases tourists with special needs turn to the facilities and services capable of providing for them in the best possible manner, according to their needs. Given that 84% of tourists with special needs express only one requirement, 10% express at least two and, a little more than 5% of them, at least three, a detailed analysis of the needs declared by tourists with special needs gives the following classification of expressed needs [1] :
Table 3 – Type of need for tourists with special needs (1999)
What emerges from the enquiry is that those who declare they have special needs have not necessarily encountered any barriers or problems. In fact, among those who have special diet needs, the most frequent among needs, only 19% complain that they had problems in being provided with “dietetic meals”, or among those who expressed the need for anallergic or hypoallergic environments, only 16% found it difficult to find “aseptic accommodation”. As a whole the most relevant problems that emerge are:
The comparison between persons who declare they have “special needs” and those who complain having had “problems and barriers while travelling” leads one to retain that the tourists who have had the biggest problems in travelling are mostly the tourists with disabilities. These are in fact the persons that mostly need health facilities and personnel, means of transport and accessible services. (up) Travelling after 65 years of age The ENEA-Iter survey is also a source of data regarding elderly tourists, who do not enter the category of those tourists who have declared they have special needs, yet, nevertheless, present peculiar features, which seem to call for a moment of reflection. With reference to the year 1999, we are speaking of a set of 2 million and 140 thousand travellers, who are over 64 years of age and cover 6.9% of total number of travellers. The information gathered helps build a profile of the tourist “over 64” according to certain social and economic characteristics. It is a category of tourists in which neither of the genders, male or female, prevail, in which the most frequent profession is that of the housewife, living mainly in Northern Italy. (up) Travelling subject to what conditions: "the potential tourist demand"Let us now speak of
those who do not travel, but who would do so under specific conditions. We are
speaking of 490 thousand individuals, 1.9% of the more than 25 million Italians
who declared that they do not travel, in 1999. First of all it would be best to
try to understand the reasons which determine a non propensity to travel. In
fact the data show that 61.1% (298.709 people) declare they have “a serious
health problem”, while the remaining 38.9% (189.890 people) do not travel due to
a generic “impairment to moving/travelling”.
The survey has given a deeper insight of the phenomenon of the non-expressed demand for tourism, trying to decipher under what conditions the “potential tourists” would travel. Over 61% of potential tourists place as a minimum requisite in order to travel the “need to be accompanied”, 25% would ask for the “availability of medical assistance”, 7% would require “barrier-free architecture” in the facilities and services. This group of individuals expresses the highest number of needs necessary to make travelling possible and most probably represents that of disabled people. Graph 2 – Specific conditions under which the “potential tourist” would travel (1999)
1. Every tourist was allowed to express more than one specific need. (up) |
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