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

About 50 people attended a seminar on Access Tourism given in mid-May by Sandra Rhodda of the New Zealand Tourism Research Institute (NZTRI)and Director of Access Tourism New Zealand.  The seminar was held at Auckland University of Technology.  (AUT).    Audience members included tourism operators, business people, academics, and individuals from local councils, Qualmark, a government member, and people from a variety of NGOs.   Rhodda gave a summary of why New Zealand needs to develop an Access Tourism sector, mainly from the perspective of the economic imperative to do so.  She also gave examples of developments in Access Tourism in the rest of the world, pointed out how New Zealand is lagging in this area, and discussed the kinds of research that New Zealand needs to do to get such an industry sector going.  To see the presentation, go here. 

The seminar was a prelude to the up and coming one day conference on Access Tourism - also to be run by NZTRI/AUT at the central Auckland campus – on October 4th.  The conference will look at various aspects of Access Tourism, including some of the following: the current situation NZ and worldwide, website access and information best practice, government strategy, policy, and obligations, best practice in transport , accommodation, and attractions access, legal aspects, and quality rating for Access Tourism products in New Zealand.  It will also include brainstorming sessions on strategies for advancing the development of Access Tourism in New Zealand and developing collaboration as a tool to advance that development. These topics are based on those most popularly picked from a list of possible topics in an online survey. Registration and programme details will be available shortly on this website and on the NZTRI website.

October 4 2010 has been set as the date for the first ever conference in New Zealand on Access Tourism.  The conference will look at various aspects of Access Tourism, including some of the following: the current situation in NZ and worldwide, website access and information best practice, government strategy, policy, and obligations, best practice in transport , accommodation, and attractions access,  training for access in the tourism and hospitality sector, legal aspects, and quality rating for Access Tourism products in New Zealand.   It will also include brainstorming sessions on strategies for advancing the development of Access Tourism in New Zealand and developing collaboration as a tool to advance that development.  These topics are based on those most popularly picked from a list of possible topics in an online survey.   The conference is being run by the New Zealand Tourism Research Institute at Auckland University of Technology, and will be a no frills sustainable event.  For more information, contact sandrarhodda at hotmail.com.

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

During the Leaders Summit ’10 seminar in Auckland on the 4^th of June, sponsors, partners and experts came together to discuss the impact of the Rugby World Cup 2011 on New Zealand’s tourism, media, sports and creative industries. Martin Snedden, Chief Executive of the RWC 2011 pointed out that not only the bigger cities will be hosting the games but smaller towns like Whangarei, Hamilton, Napier, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Nelson, Dunedin and  Invercargill. By planning the games across the whole country, tourists will also reach less known areas, bringing profit to all regions.  Snedden pointed out that New Zealand will play a hosting role, not only a sports event. The RWC offers opportunities for regions to ‘show off’ by organizing festivals and looking after the people visiting. He also said that New Zealand will not have enough beds to accommodate all RWC tourists. To increase the number of beds, 3 cruise ships will be used (2 in Wellington, 1 in Christchurch). Additionally, New Zealanders will be asked to rent out private homes and to volunteer as hosts to make sure all the visitors will have a place to stay. The volunteer recruitment program was launched on the 9^th of June on the RWC 2011 website. It would be a good idea if the recruitment team emphasized that volunteers could rent out their homes to  senior tourists and visitors with a disability. People who are less mobile or have a visual, hearing or intellectual impairment need a comfortable place to stay during the RWC and would probably prefer not be sleeping in a backpackers dorm or cruise ship. Many seniors and people with disabilities will not be able to fit in with lack of comfort, as youngsters and more able adults will be able to. As Snedden noted, ‘hosting will be the thing that makes the big difference’ and the RWC offers a platform to show what New Zealand can do.

Hold on to your hat, we are off to a conference!!

Want input into an Access Tourism Conference being planned for Auckland, NZ in October?  Go here to have your say.  Even if you don’t plan to attend, you can still give us valuable input.  So far, we have had 62 responses.  This form will only run a few more days so do it now!  Thanks, ATNZ.

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

Regional festivals, art and culture exhibitions, food tasting events, and markets are planned in anticipation of the Rugby World Cup 2011 to be held in New Zealand.  During the six week event, locals and visitors will be keen to explore more of New Zealand, enabling the regions to showcase their industries, people, arts and culture.  As the regions get ready to host overseas tourists and Kiwis, events have been listed on the Festival Programme 2011, an official RWC2011 site. Welcoming visitors means welcoming all ranges of potential visitors, including children, youngsters, adults, seniors, men, women, foreigners, locals – and people with disabilities. 

The events presently listed on the Festival Program give very little or no information about access, whether access for visitors with a visual, hearing or mobility impairment. Parts of this  website are still under construction but few of the events listed at the time of writing have taken into account  visits from the disabled. Outdoor events such as festivals and markets state nothing about disabled parking lots, paved paths, ramps, Braille trails, or audio tours. Regrettably, out of the 49 events listed, only one of the theater performance group shows engagement with less mobile visitors by describing on their website ease of access to their shows.  

The museums and galleries of New Zealand will also open their doors for RWC tourists. The Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington has included visitors with a disability in their strategy. Disabled parking, adapted guided tours, education programs, wheelchairs, a scooter, audio guides, captions on videos and hearing loops are provided in this venue and people with disabilities will feel welcomed. Govett Brewster Art Gallery is also pro-active in welcoming disabled guests.  It was actively involved with New Plymouths District Council’s Disability Strategy, offered its first Sign Language-interpreted exhibition tour during the Sign Language Awareness Week in 2009, and altered the size of text on wall labels. Besides providing access for the visually impaired, mobility- impaired visitors are encouraged to visit, knowing the galleries’ space lends itself for wheelchair access and wheelchairs are for hire (website). Extensive search for disabled access at other significant museums and galleries throughout New Zealand shows that their websites lack access information about their premises. If New Zealand event producers, museum, and galleries want to offer an “unforgettable RWC experience”to all visitors, they will need to catch up with the access strategies of Te Papa Tongarewa and Govett Brewster Art Gallery.  They should invest in accessible experiences and information provision for people with disabilities because lack of attention for the fastest-growing, largest-spending segment of Baby Boomers (who will have more disability with age), seniors and people with a disability will result in loss of revenues and decline of New Zealand’s destination image.

Access Tourism NZ is pleased that efforts in Auckland around access for people with disabilities (PwDs) and Rugby World Cup 2011 are continuing.  We first noted on this website last month that Auckland is leading the way when it comes to this topic.  Now the latest Auckland’s Rugby World Cup 2011 Newsletter (May 2010) lists a discussion of disabilities and RWC as one of six newsworthy items.  The newsletter is aimed at tourism businesses and in the article – titled “Don’t miss out on a big part of your audience” – operators are given compelling reasons for catering for PwDs. 

Minnie Baragwanath, Auckland City Council’s disability programme advisor, says in the article “The Disability Resource Centre has been doing a lot of work looking at the facilities at the key venues and we’ve received a really positive response. People are keen to know what they can do to help.”  One of the first initiatives Minnie’s team is tackling is having mobility scooters available to visitors to the city.  Then she plans to study access implemented at other world-class events.  “Nick Morris from Melbourne is helping us put together an action plan of what we want to achieve. Nick’s worked on accessibility planning at the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, so he’ll be a great source of ideas.”

The next step is to communicate to businesses about what they can do to ensure people with a disability can access their business.  “It might be something as simple as whether a disabled person can actually get into your shop.”  To aid in this, an Event Ready kit for businesses – which will be available early next year – will include information on how to improve access.

 At the beginning of this week, tourism operators in New Zealand received an email from the New Zealand Tourism Guide (NZTG) about updates to the site.  The updates are centred around Rugby World Cup, a major sporting event to be held here in 2011.  NZTG is part of the Yellow Pages Group.  Information for people with disabilities is scattered on the site.  For example, there is a page headed People with Special Needs (an unfortunate use of language) which claims that “most facilities have wheelchair access, but it is wise to check when booking” (see yesterday’s guest post for a discussion of this statement).  Another page – titled Accessible Accommodation – states that

 “For travellers with visual impairment, it is important to check whether accommodations welcome your guide dog………..”

This is unfortunate.  Under NZ legislation, guide dogs, guide dogs in training, guide dog puppies and breeding stock are legally protected from discrimination 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 on any public vehicle including: motels, hotels, restaurants, shops, beaches, cinemas, hotels, buses ferries, domestic and international flights, ships, taxis, trains, and so on.

Because denying access to a person with a guide dog is considered a serious offence under NZ law, it is incorrect to tell our potential visitors that they should check if accommodations welcome guide dogs.   NZ has already had stories that have gone viral about visitors forced out by accommodation providers because they had guide dogs.  Hopefully, no further such stories will arise from similar experiences by our visitors.  It would be well if NZTG changed this statement to better reflect the legal obligations of accommodation providers.

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

The New Zealand Tourism Guide (NZTG) is “one of the top commercial tourism directory websites in New Zealand” providing comprehensive information for tour operators and tourists. This week, an updated NZTG was launched in anticipation of Rugby World Cup , a major event occurring in NZ in 2011.  A paragraph about accessible accommodation for People with Disabilities (PwDs)  – slightly altered from previous versions – can be found after extensive key word search.

The NZTG makes a distinction between ‘accessible’ accommodations and ‘disabled’ accommodations, although it is not clear why this is done.   Visitors to the site are told that they can expect some, if not all, of a list of accessible facilities at accommodations, but “before booking your accommodation, you should always confirm with your hosts that adequate provision is available”.   This is unfortunate because research done into access for PwDs at accommodations in NZ shows that many operators think their premises are accessible when they are not.   Therefore, potential guests willing to reserve at accommodations which claim they are accessible cannot assume accessible facilities are present just because they are claimed to be.  

A link to “View all listings for accessible accommodations” leads potential guests to a list which is organized in alphabetic order and contains around two hundred accommodations. Unfortunately, none of the accommodations emphasize accessibility, and an in-depth search of the websites of the first ten “accessible” accommodations listed shows that they have little or absolutely no information about access for PwDs.  Regrettably, it is can be concluded that the list of “accessible” accommodations given on the NZTG website could be misleading to potential visitors with disabilities.  By providing such information, NZTG made a step in the right direction, but it needs to examine content and not rely just on operator self-assessment of access.  After all, by listing such providers (who may or may not be accessible to PwDs), NZTG seems to be endorsing that such accommodations are in fact accessible.

In 2011, New Zealand will host the Rugby World Cup (RWC2011).  In anticipation of this event, Tourism Auckland has run a series of “Visitor Ready Workshops”.  The workshops were a regional RWC2011 initiative funded by the councils of the region.  In a first for New Zealand, the sessions include one on access for people with disabilities.  Given by Auckland City Council Disability Advisor Minnie Baragwanath, the session can be viewed here on webcasts.  The workshop aimed to help Auckland tourism providers better understand the business opportunity and challenge of the often invisible disabilities market.  Minnie also manages the RWC2011 access work-stream.

Kevin Blackford, editor/Publisher of the New Zealand TravelMemo has written an insightful piece on mining and tourism in the Coromandel Peninsula, NZ (April 27, 2010).  While this debate is outside the general content of this website, it is reproduced here in its entirely with the authors permission because it is an important issue for New Zealand tourism.  The piece focuses on the Coromandel because it’s familiar territory to the writer, who grew up in the area. The same questions over mining vs tourism may well apply to the other areas due for removal from Schedule 4. There are pre-worded and editable submission forms on the websites of Coromandel Watchdog, NZ Greenpeace and Forest and Bird. Overseas readers are also permitted to make submissions. The Ministry of Economic Development (www.med.govt.nz) submissions deadline is 5pm Tuesday 04 MAY.

With one week to go until the closing deadline for submissions, thousands of people have already made them online to the Ministry of Economic Development commenting on its plan to open up previously protected areas of the conservation estate to allow mining. While Gerry Brownlee talks of a $54 billion mineral bonanza under the Coromandel Peninsula, his ministry has yet to actually undertake a technical investigation there. The annual royalties (just $6.5m from gold last year), plus the tax take and associated job creation would amount to only a fraction of that unproven total, yet this natural playground and its tourism revenues (Coromandel’s tourism industry has an estimated annual worth of $360 million and is growing at 5% pa. For the year ended FEB10 Coromandel’s domestic guest nights were up 7.4% and its international guest nights were up 11%. FEB was the first time ever that international guest nights exceeded domestic for the month) are to be risked in the search for a goldmine.

Read on…………….

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IHC (Living with Intellectual Disability in New Zealand) has released the last issue of “Hot Issues” for 2009.

In it, they note that the year started with bright promise. In 2008:

• New Zealand ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• The Social Services Select Committee reported on its inquiry into the quality of care and service provision for disabled people
• The long-term disability support services review was released
• The first review of the 2001 New Zealand Disability Strategy was reported

IHC questions, however, whether there has been any actual improvement in the lives of people with intellectual and other disabilities this year.

This last Hot Issues for 2009 summarises the year’s issues, achievements, and disappointments.

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