4 Jul
Yet Another Horror Story About a Disabled Person in NZ Goes Viral
The Rolling Rains Report (RRR), the world’s leading website about Travel, Disability, and Universal Design, has again picked up a horror story of a New Zealander with a disability refused access to a bus. This follows on from several other NZ horror stories that have gone viral over the last couple of years on the RRR and on other websites – a woman refused access to a bus, another woman thrown out of her motel because she had a seeing-eye dog, councils being sued because they failed to comply with accessibility regulations, wheelchair users trapped on the Trans Alpine passenger train for 11 hours, blind hotel guests charged extra for their seeing-eye dog…….these stories are not a good look for New Zealand. Tourism is our second-most important exchange earner and hugely important to our economy. While we have no idea in this country how many of our domestic or international visitors are people with disabilities, it is known that about 17% of kiwis have a disability, that about the same percent are disabled in our major markets, that people with disabilities would currently travel more if tourism and travel products were reliably accessible, and that the number of people who will become disabled is set to increase as the large Baby Boomer segment ages, because disability increases with age. It is also known that Access Tourism is one of the fastest growing tourism segments internationally. New Zealand will miss out on this increasingly important sector if it does not work to improve its Access Tourism offer and to increase the number of positive instead of negative tourism and travel related stories.
