The importance of infrastructure in the development of accessible tourism

Abstract

Accessible tourism is an area that has received only scant attention in Hungarian tourism research. A change in this is only visible in recent years, as a result of the work of a few researchers starting to focus on this issue. Based on the findings of a questionnaire survey, the author of this paper presents important characteristics of travel by people living with disabilities, discussing the need to develop its infrastructure. The issue of accessible tourism concerns approximately 10% of the population of Europe, so in addition to the social and moral magnitude of the issue, serving the travel needs of people living with disabilities is also significant for the economy. In order to create the special supply and to provide equal access of services for those concerned, their expectations and unique consumer habits must be known. As member of an Erasmus project called Peer Act, the author also details the research findings of four project partner countries (Germany, Italy, Spain and Croatia) where data was collected from small samples.