Easy does it - Simple, low-cost changes to benefit you and your visitors

06/04/2010 

This 12 page brochure breaks down the visitor journey into six stages, from attracting the visitor to book to once they have returned home. 'Easy does it’ is packed full of ideas that are simple and low-cost, including the provision of easy to find information. Improved accessibility benefits a wide range of the population from dad with a bad back, to gran with a hearing aid, a new mum with a pram or a teenager with a broken leg!  Implementing just a few of the ideas suggested in the brochure will help to enhance the quality of experience for many and in turn not only meet, but exceed guest expectations.

  • Stage one : Attracting visitors in the first place.
  • Stage two : Making your booking/enquiry processes easier.
  • Stage three : Taking the stress out of travel.
  • Stage four : They’re here.
  • Stage five : Time to go home.
  • Stage six : Sweet dreams, memories and keeping in touch.

Tourism businesses with improved accessibility appeal to a wider range of visitors. It’s not just disabled visitors who benefit; it’s families, older people, practically all your visitors in one way or another. There are enough ideas about access improvements to fill an encyclopedia.

This leaflet concentrates on suggestions that can be achieved at little or no cost and it’s often these smaller changes that have the biggest impact.

Some businesses find disability a bit scary and are daunted by what they think they have to do. But most people, if they stop and think about it, know plenty of disabled people – a gran who’s hard of hearing, a child with reading difficulties, someone who walks with a stick, someone who wears glasses. Very few would actually call themselves disabled though.

So our understanding of disability tends to leap to extremes and whilst they are important and shouldn’t be ignored, it’s easy to stereotype.

  • Only 4% of people with disabilities use a wheelchair, so it’s not always about door widths, ramps and lifts.
  • Far more people are partially sighted than blind.
  • Far more people have a hearing impairment than are deaf.

We want the tourism industry to be more relaxed about accessibility and to see people who are disabled simply as members of the community.

Why should you bother?

  • Because there’s an ageing population.
  • The baby boomers are getting older.
  • They still want a good time, they’ve got money to spend and you ignore them at your peril!