Accessible tourism development: a good public-private partnerships practice

This paper makes a practical and ontological contribution to tourism knowledge in the specific topic of tourism accessibility for People with Disability (PwD). Recent study has recognized the existence of... [ view full abstract ]

This paper makes a practical and ontological contribution to tourism knowledge in the specific topic of tourism accessibility for People with Disability (PwD).

Recent study has recognized the existence of cultural-attitudinal barriers that PwD encounter participating in tourism but how to break down these constraints is still unknown matter. Moreover for scholars the nature of the nexus between behaviour toward disability and tourism accessibility remains unclear.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role and the nature of intervention program that uses role-play and contact with PwD, as a strategy used to changing attitudes to PwD.

To do so, we employ various theoretical perspectives from the multiple domain literature including Behavioural Theories, Co-creation Value Theories, Theories of Disability and Tourism Destination Theories.

A qualitative approach using case study will be conducted employing in depth interviews of person involved in the initiative called "Open Monument to All - Culture without Barriers”, whose objective was to make monuments accessible to citizens with temporary and permanent disabilities and also to allowed sightless participants to lead guided activities, presenting monuments to the citizens.

A content analysis will be conducted to analyse data and to find conceptual relations between behaviour and tourism accessibility and to evaluate the key aspects and the emergent issues that encourage the actors involved to actively participate to the initiative and to co-create capital value.

Further aspects of accessibility, cultural attitudinal barriers and behaviour toward disability will be explored analysing the points of view and the needs of active project participants.

The results should contribute to the debate on the potential contributions of tourism and cultural experience suggesting how to properly use culture to challenge social change.

This study presents a successful Sardinian case worthy of being replicated and emulated everywhere and it is an important example of public-private governance.

This work proposes simple but important suggestions to Destination Organizations that want to implement sustainable, accessible and inclusive development processes.

However, the research is able to only partially capture the complexity of the issue and it is not applicable to every reality.