Education and Training for Disability Awareness of Front Line Hospitality Staff in Selected Hotels in the Cape Winelands

Abstract

Universal accessibility implies that everybody has an equal chance to access anything, which should also apply to the tourism industry. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation has pleaded that tourism be open to all, despite any impairments. Universal accessibility is not always available to visually, intellectually, mobility, psychiatrically and learning impoverished persons. People with Disabilities are often denied tourist activity pleasures enjoyed by healthy persons. The obvious challenges include restriction of mobility, but few facilities are visually impaired-friendly, besides addressing the other impairments. The study question was to investigate whether hospitality staff are educated or trained to assist people with disabilities to enjoy fully the facilities offered to paying guests at places of accommodation. The study adopted a mixed methodology, following a cluster and convenient sampling framework, focussing on the Cape Winelands area of Cape Town, South Africa. The results indicate that hospitality staff are interested in receiving disability awareness training, but that essential appropriate training would benefit disabled travel as a market segment in South Africa. This study is of material importance to tourism organisations, such as Cape Town Tourism and Wesgro, in promoting tourism in one of the major destinations in world tourism.

Keywords

• accessible tourism
• hospitality industry
• people with disabilities
• tourism barriers
• universal accessibility