7 Apr
Why Qualmark NZ Should Include a Category for Access Tourism in Their Quality Rating System
Qualmark New Zealand Limited is NZ tourism’s official quality agency. It is a government and private sector partnership between Tourism New Zealand and New Zealand Automobile Association. Qualmark licenses professional and trustworthy New Zealand tourism businesses to use the Qualmark ‘tourism’s official quality mark’ to help international and domestic travellers select places to stay, things to do and ways to get around. The role of Qualmark is to help achieve the industry’s overall goal to enhance New Zealand’s reputation as a world class visitor destination. Assessments of Qualmarked businesses are conducted annually by professional assessors for facilities, health and safety, front and back of house practices, guest care, environmental, and social actions, amongst other things.
Qualmark should include an optional Access category that should be properly vetted by registered assessors from an organisation like the Barrier Free New Zealand Trust or Qualmark assessors should be trained by such an organisation. A search of the Qualmarked accommodations listed on the www.tourism.net.nz site (NZ Tourism Guide) as wheelchair accessible in Auckland, for example, results in 13 wheelchair-accessible operators. The first five have Qualmark ratings. The first of these says it is wheelchair accessible, and has some further information on its website, the second that there are “wheelchair accessible facilities” (but no further details are available), the third that one of their cottages is “wheelchair friendly” with a ramp and accessible toilet and shower (no further details), the fourth that there is a family-size wheelchair friendly unit (no further details), and the last is for the same facility as the previous listing. Little of the information given is enough to ensure that a person with an ambulatory disability requiring the use of a wheelchair can make an informed choice that their needs will be met if they should purchase accommodation at providers similar to these. Independent assessment is needed because it is known that operators often think they are accessible to people with disabilities when they are not. An examination of just wheelchair access into tourism operations on the West Coast, for example, revealed that while 86% stated their businesses were wheelchair accessible, only 38% actually were. This assessment was only of access into the business. No internal assessment was done for the most part, so that one can expect a full assessment would reveal that even fewer businesses that think they are accessible actually are. Qualmark rated business such as those on the NZ Tourism Guide which state they are accessible may indeed be so, but unless access is assessed and rated (as it is in countries overseas), a visitor currently has no absolute surety that it is so.
Elsewhere, operators who are Qualmarked show the wheelchair access sign but there is no other information given. A visitor may think that such operations are accessible because they are Qualmarked, especially in light of the fact that the Tourism NZ website states that:
“For your perfect New Zealand holiday, make sure you look for accommodation and experiences which carry our Qualmark. It means that we have checked everything they do, including how they look after the environment, and it will be an experience that won’t disappoint.”
A banner on the website also states that Qualmark means “100% pure assurance.” Therefore, visitors with disabilities have no reason to suspect that a tourism business stating it is accessible may not be so. With the worldwide increase in the number of people with disabilities travelling, and with the ageing of the huge Baby Boomer generation, more of our visitors are going to have disabilities, and are going to depend on quality rating systems such as Qualmark to give “100% pure assurance.”
