Accessibility in Inclusive Tourism? Hotels Distributed through Online Channels

Editorial information:  MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute). ISSN : 2075-4698 - 2021/11.

There is a lack of comprehensive international studies on accommodations for people with disabilities; only small, local-level studies exist. This study aims to show the status of the hotel industry through an online distribution channel in terms of accessibility to offer more inclusive tourism.

An analysis was been carried out with more than 31,000 hotels from the online travel agency Booking.com in the 100 most touristic cities in the world, based on data gathered in 2019. Booking.com provided accessibility filters for 8 categories of adaptation for persons with disabilities. At the time, this was more than Hotels.com or Expedia (3 categories) and Tripadvisor (0 categories). More than 18.000 hotels were identified with some type of adaptation.

The study shows that, worldwide, countries with the highest income per capita have the highest degree of hotel adaptation. North America, compared to other world regions, has the highest incidence of the accessibility features in hotel infrastructures. Results show that, even in the countries with the highest level of adaptation, only 30% of the hotels offer adaptations that help to avoid mobility barriers (e.g. for tourists who use a wheelchair), and moreover, only 5% of the hotels offer adaptations to persons with vision impairments.

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