Accessible tourism: origins, state of the art and future lines of research

Abstract

Accessible tourism (AT) is a quite young and evolving research field. This paper provides an original review of the most significant academic literature on AT. Through a narrative method called ‘qualitative systematic review’, this article contextualizes the emergence of AT, identifies the applied methods and theories, the main research lines and the latest advances in the field. Further, we analysed the impact of disability’s change of conception on the evolution of AT studies. The results reveal a considerable increase from 2007 onwards of the themes covered by publications on AT and a greater influence of the biopsychosocial model. Studies implementing experimental methodologies or theoretical approaches are more frequent in the last decade. We also identified shared limitations that are hindering the advance of knowledge on AT, such as the excessive use of qualitative sampling in surveys or the recurrence of similar social circles for the selection of participants. The complexity of disability as a physical and social phenomenon is a challenge to be addressed in the future of AT studies. This paper contributes by providing an AT literature review grounded in its social context, which allows us to identify future trends and avenues of research and turn current limitations into valuable proposals.