Accessible Tourism: Service Encounters with Disabled Tourists in Austria

Senior tourists and handicapped tourists constitute a growing market as the European Population is ageing continuously (Alén et al. 2012). Between mid-2012 and mid-2013, these two segments accounted for 783 million trips of one or several days' duration within the European Union (Neumannconsult 2014). Although the potential of increased revenues from "accessible tourism" has been widely recognised and supported in several studies at a European level, touristic providers have as yet largely failed to react with the necessary adaptations of their existing offers. In this presentation, an exploratory study of handicapped tourists‘ experiences is presented. A multi-method approach is used to analyse the service scape of an Austrian Spa, a festival organizer, and a museum, from the tourists’ point of view. The results give an insight into different types of impairment. Best practice examples are compared with typical shortcomings in the service scape of these tourism providers.