Tourism For All NZ Research Group

Champions for accessible and inclusive tourism in New Zealand.

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Tourism For All NZ at UD2024

The Tourism for All NZ Research Group recently presented a discussion of our lessons about making tourism accessible and inclusive in NZ and Australia to an international audience of delegates at the 2024 Universal Design Conference, Norway, hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Equality.

View the video online or download the presentation.

Key Facts and Figures about Accessible Tourism

Tourism For All New Zealand have collected useful, evidence-based facts about accessible tourism in New Zealand. Read them here, and keep up to date with our industry-relevant research (links coming soon).

Did you know that the access tourist market represents 25% of global tourism, is larger than China and Europe combined, and is growing three times faster than any other tourist market?

Key Facts and Figures

Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
Insights Into the Motivations, Practice, and Relationality of Dementia Care During Travel
(University of Patras, 2026-06-16) Gillovic, Brielle; McIntosh, Alison
While tourism scholars have increasingly considered the rising prevalence of dementia and its intersection with tourism, this work has largely been approached through a functional, supply-side lens, emphasising industry responses and dementia-friendly provision. Although valuable, this focus offers limited insight into how dementia can challenge the assumption of independence in tourism, often rendering travel possible only through the presence and labour of a caring companion, usually an informal caregiver, shaping how care is experienced and negotiated while travelling. Understanding care as both a practice and an ethic is therefore essential to conceptualising tourism as a meaningful site for ‘living well’ with dementia. Guided by interpretive phenomenology and informed by ethics of care, a sample of informal caregivers in New Zealand participated in semi-structured phone/online interviews. Preliminary thematic analysis revealed three interrelated themes. Motivations for Travel reveals informal caregivers’ motivations for travelling with a person living with dementia, focusing on considerations about (non)participation and the effort to sustain identity, relationships, and shared meaning amidst the emotional and practical demands of care. Caregiving in Practice reveals the functional elements of dementia caregiving during travel, including planning, managing logistical challenges, maintaining routines, vigilance, and adapting to unfamiliar environments, highlighting how tourism intensifies and makes practical care work visible. Relationality of Care reveals the moral and relational dimensions of caregiving during travel, showing how decisions are shaped by perceived duty and relational responsibility to uphold dignity, maintain shared travel identities, and navigate social judgment and stigma. By integrating interpretive phenomenology, ethics of care, and theories of personhood and couplehood, this study situates dementia care during travel as a morally and relationally significant practice. Travel decisions and experiences are shaped by moral obligations, relational interdependencies, and the negotiation of identity and shared meaning. Findings provide original insight into how tourism participation is either constrained or enabled, highlighting the needs, wellbeing, and relational realities of both people living with dementia and their informal caregivers, and offering directions for research and practice to support inclusive, ethically informed, and meaningful tourism experiences.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Challenges of International Travel Insurance for Leisure Travellers With Pre-existing Mental Health Conditions
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2026-06-08) McIntosh, Alison; Willson, Gregory; Moraslage, Dhananjana
International leisure travel is deemed therapeutic for reducing stress and improving mental health and wellbeing, although unfamiliar environments can exacerbate pre-existing mental health conditions. Travel insurance plays a crucial role in mitigating risks for travellers. There is a lack of critical evaluation regarding how insurers assess risk, determine coverage eligibility and communicate exclusions. International travel insurance policies may contain restrictive clauses, ambiguous wording and outright exclusions that may disproportionately disadvantage travellers with pre-existing conditions, including mental health conditions. This paper evaluates whether New Zealand’s international travel insurance policies adequately accommodate travellers with pre-existing mental health conditions. Analysis of 23 international travel insurance policies revealed common challenges relating to exclusion, disclosure and potential stigma and discrimination. New Zealand’s policies were found to vary significantly in how they addressed pre-existing mental health conditions, with many lacking clear definitions and offering limited or conditional coverage. Policies required medical disclosure, stability periods, additional assessments or higher premiums before granting coverage, which may generate anxiety and present significant challenges for travellers living with mental health conditions. These patterns suggest uneven treatment and may contribute to the persistence of stigma, making it difficult for travellers living with mental health conditions to obtain inclusive and comprehensive coverage.
Access status: Open Access ,
Driving Accessible Tourism Development Through Research Priorities for Destination Management Organisations in New Zealand
(De Gruyter Brill, 2025-09-22) Gillovic, Brielle; McIntosh, Alison
Access status: Open Access ,
Ensuring Hospitality and Tourism Organisations’ Websites Are Accessible to All
(Tuwhera Open Access, 2025-12-31) Han, Haozhe; McIntosh, Alison; Gillovic, Brielle
Research shows that hospitality and tourism organisations overlook the importance of website accessibility and their information remains inaccessible to a growing market of people with disabilities (Singh et al., 2021). International standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/) developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), provide an effective means to identify and remedy website accessibility issues. Our study evaluated Chinese tour operators' websites for their compliance with WCAG 2.0 Guidelines. The findings confirmed that greater attention is needed to provide accessible website information for Chinese tourists visiting New Zealand; a key visitor market that is increasingly characterised by an ageing population and higher prevalence of disabilities. Website accessibility benefits people who have physical, sensory, intellectual, and other disabilities. Information is essential to this group of potential visitors for pre-trip planning, and crucially, in assessing the accessibility of hospitality or tourism organisations’ offerings. Four main principles form the basis of website accessibility and are stipulated in the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines: 1) Perceivable: Ensuring the website provides information in multiple sensory formats, such as providing alternative text for images, captions for videos, and enhancing the ease of seeing and hearing content by using high-contrast colours and font types to enhance the visibility and audibility of content. 2) Operable: Ensuring the website supports navigation of content by keyboard without a mouse, such as providing keyboard shortcuts. 3) Understandable: Ensuring the website’s content is easy to understand by using a consistent layout, maintaining uniform colour contrasts and fonts, and centralising the navigation bar to help users locate and interact with the website. 4) Robust: Ensuring the website is adaptable for various assistive technologies, such as screen readers and magnifiers (Caldwell et al., 2008). Our study applied these four principles to evaluate the accessibility of the websites of seven Chinese tour operators identified as Tourism New Zealand’s preferred partners in China (Sohu, 2018). For the principle of ‘perceivable,’ some websites lacked alternative text for images, videos, and audio, which could render content difficult to access by users with disabilities. Regarding ‘operable,’ challenges included limited keyboard shortcuts and inconsistent navigation structures that hinder the usability of websites for people with limited/hand functions who rely on keyboard navigation instead of the mouse. By contrast, the websites generally did well in terms of being ‘understandable,’ with clear instructions and consistent layout, and ‘robust’, as all but one of the websites were compatible with assistive technologies, e.g. allowing screen readers to interpret webpage content accurately. The accuracy of the webpage content was achieved by providing well-structured HTML sectioning elements, e.g., header, nav, and main. Implementing the four accessibility principles is crucial to ensure that websites can be accessed by all, including people with disabilities. Further enhancements may include using accessibility symbols and icons to denote accessibility features and setting up a dedicated accessibility information page on the website. Importantly, integrating reviews from people with disabilities who have used the organisation’s services can help others find the information they need more quickly and efficiently. By complying with international accessibility standards and considering the accessibility of their websites, hospitality and tourism organisations can reach a wider audience and demonstrate social responsibility.
Access status: Open Access ,
Sharing Experiences of Co-design for Accessible Tourism
(Elsevier, 2025-12-22) McIntosh, Alison; Flemmer, Claire