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

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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.
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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.
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Sharing Experiences of Co-design for Accessible Tourism
(Elsevier,2025-12-22) McIntosh, Alison; Flemmer, Claire
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Representations of Hospitality at The Special Needs Hotel
(Elsevier,2018-10-03) McIntosh, Alison; Harris, Candice
Norms of ‘professionalism’ expected by the hospitality industry may create unrealistic and problematic expectations for employing people with learning disabilities. This study provides a first consideration of hospitality training for young people with learning difficulties. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the popular television documentary series The Special Needs Hotel, generating two key themes: hospitality as achieving independence; and hospitality as expectations. Hospitality training is seen as a means of enabling ‘independence’ for young people with learning disabilities with strategies used to ensure the trainees meet the necessary ‘expectations’ and requirements of hospitality work. However, this positive representation contrasts with the struggles, fear and realities of independence and hospitality work for the trainees themselves. Contributing to discourses of representation and notions of inclusion and exclusion in hospitality, this study provides an opportunity to review and vary what is expected of hospitality work to increase employment for people with disabilities.