The economic significance of
barrier-free tourism is on the increase however the awareness of the needs of
elderly and disable people is frequently lacking. The potential market represented
by travellers whose mobility is restricted has, in the past, been seriously
neglected.
The German National Coordination Office for Tourism for All (NatKo) was created
in 1999 to combine and coordinate the activities of a variety of self-help
organisations working towards this end and thus help to improve travel
facilities for disable people. NatKo is the central representative body for
barrier-free tourism in Germany.
In 2003 the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour (BMWA) in Germany made a
study to check the importance of training to be able to meet the needs and
wishes of this target group. This study showed that the potential market of
disable people must be fast considerable. In Germany there are 6.7 million
people who are registered as severely disable, representing more exactly 8.1%
of the population. Half of them are over 65 years of age and the proportion of
elderly people is on the rise, doing that in a few years the overall proportion
people with restricted mobility will become between 30 and 35%.
The results of the study on travel and tourism showed clearly that the market
offers hugest lacks on the services to people whose mobility is restricted:
(a) the proportion of such people travelling is lower than in the case of those
mobility is not restricted – 54.3% against 75.3%;
(b) travel is largely undertaken regardless of season;
(c) the proportion of tours within Germany is high at 41.2% compared with 30.5%
outside Germany;
(d) 37% of those questioned has already abandoned plans to travel because of a
lack of barrier-free facilities;
(e) 48% would travel more often if the available offers were more plentiful.
(f) This study also made various recommendations – one important was the
creation of a nation-wide training programme for those working in travel and
tourism.
Currently net sales of holidays in this target group has real potential for
growth of EUR 620 to EUR 1930 million, that, according to the BMWA, could mean
up to 90 000 new full-time jobs.
One of the chief areas of NatKo was ensure that employees in a barrier-free
tourism industry are professionally qualified. For this it has designed a
training programme with training material prepared between people who work in
tourism and representatives of organisations of disable people. This training
material, highly practice-related with no essential aspects omitted, is focus
on four groups of people with restricted mobility:
(a) people with walking difficulties and those who are confined to wheelchairs;
(b) the blind and visually handicapped;
(c) the deaf and those with impaired hearing;
(d) people with understanding difficulties.
Elderly people often come into these categories with difficulties in walking,
seeing, hearing or understanding and therefore also need the benefits of
barrier-free tourism.
A considerable amount of training on barrier-free tourism is being carried out
in Germany. A number of tourism organizations run training courses:
· Lower Saxony has run a whole series in its various regions;
· Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has made the subject part of a training campaign;
· Rhine Hesse is actively working towards barrier-free tourism, offers training
to all those employed in tourism in the region;
· The State of Brandenburg has a comprehensive programme of training.
All those taking part have understood that know-how is one key to success in
barrier-free tourism for all.
