Access Tourism NZ TOURISM FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, SENIORS, AND AGEING BOOMERS IN NEW ZEALAND AND WORLDWIDE

 Guest article by Veroniek Maat, Intern, NZ Tourism Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology, and Masters Graduate, Leisure, Tourism, and Environment, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

In this article, Veroniek Maat explores how ready New Zealand is to receive visitors with disabilities at the Rugby World Cup to be held in NZ in 2011.  She points out that NZ is expecting 60,000 visitors for RWC2011, some of whom are bound to have disabilities.  She highlights the fact that such visitors must use a complicated “special ticketing” system to book RWC2011 seats (unlike the non-disabled, who can do it simply on-line), and that reliable information about accessible tourism products and services is extremely difficult to find and is often misleading.

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With the Rugby World Cup coming up in September and October 2011 the Rugby World Cup CEO is emphasizing the hosting role New Zealand has to embrace. The success of the event will depend on the nation’s hosting capacity and Martin Snedden, Chief Executive of the RWC 2011, underlined the importance of hosting during the leadership seminar of the 4^th of June. The CEO is expecting 60,000 RWC visitors next year, who are setting eyes on more of New Zealand than just the games. The visitors will travel to multiple venues across New Zealand and will also cross less known regions of the country. These regions have the opportunity to ‘show off’ and engage with the Rugby World Cup visitors, despite not being fully pleased the World Cup is held in New Zealand. The question however is whether New Zealand and its regions are ready to inform and receive all these visitors adequately and according to the needs. About 17% of Kiwis report a disability and same numbers occur in other rugby-mad countries. This implies that a considerable percentage of the 60,000 visitors will have some form of disability, being a visual, hearing or physical disability.

After the visitors with disabilities have managed to book a ticket going through the complicated booking system called ‘special needs ticket line’, printing out the ‘special needs ticketing’ form, filling it out and sending it back they probably want to look up some information about tourism facilities in New Zealand. Accommodations transport, dining out and undertaking activities are all part of the journey and many people with disabilities might want to plan these things in advance, to make sure the trip goes as smoothly as possible. When searching for ‘disabled, disability or wheelchair’ and ‘tourism’ and ‘New Zealand’ with Google to see if information about accessible tourism facilities is easy to find, the opposite appears to be true. The first information sources that pop up include links to foreign disability tour operators, blogs from people with a disability and academic reports or articles. None of these websites are of use to find proper information for potential visitors with a disability.   

The most informative source that appears is the website ‘New Zealand Tourism Guide’ NZTG,  which is “one of the top commercial tourism directory websites in New Zealand”. Even though the NZTG does not fully give the information people with disabilities are looking for, it has to be recognized that it made an effort to improve information about access. One of the Google searches directs us to their ‘Accessible Accommodation’ webpage where a distinction is made between ‘accessible’ and ‘disabled’ accommodations. The difference between the two however is not apparent, and guests are advised to ‘confirm with the hosts that adequate provision is available’.  This is unfortunate.   It is hard to rely on the assurances of operators as research showed that operators often think their premises are accessible when they are not. Additionally the NZTG webpage states ‘for travelers with a visual impairment, it is important to check whether accommodations welcome your guide dog…’.  Again, this is regrettable because guide dogs are legally protected from discrimination under NZ legislation by three Acts: The Human Rights Act 1993, Dog Control Act 1996, and Transport Services Licensing Act 1989. This legislation entitles guide dogs to go into any public place and transport.

Apart from NZTG,  the 100% Pure New Zealand website refers to the website ‘Accomobility’. This website was created for operators to post information about their accommodations, which they themselves rate for access.  The website developers set up an innovative and considerate initiative even though the assessments might not be fully reliable since most accessibility assessments are dependent on operators’ claims about accessibility to their premise which makes the information less reliable as was explained above. This lack of proper information about accessibility to accommodations is quite alarming given the fact that Rugby World Cup tickets are already sold and will only be on sale for one final round. People with disabilities who managed to get a hold of tickets are presently searching for accommodations   which turned out to be difficult as they are forced to call to hosts to confirm access and cannot assume adequate information is given.