Inclusivity and Responsible Tourism: Designing a Trademark for a National Park Area

Abstract

Responsible tourism provides a particular lens by which to consider how to improve the sustainability of tourism with the ambition to enhance the positive impacts of mainstream tourism, while reducing the negative ones. In this view, facilitating travel for people with disabilities represents an exceptional opportunity, and the idea that what is accessible to one traveler may be very difficult to access to another one with a different type of disability, makes inclusive tourism a relevant part of the global sustainable tourism agenda. The present study aims to provide empirical evidence on the adoption of the principles of responsible and inclusive tourism within a national park area. To this end, the paper discusses the case of the “E-Parks” research project which investigated the area of the Gargano National Park (Italy) with a special focus on the problems faced by tourists with disabilities, and on the improvements to enable all tourists to have the full enjoyment of their tourism experience. The study contributes, therefore, to enriching the empirical literature on inclusive and responsible tourism that has its application in the design of trademark procedural guidelines enabling tourists with different disabilities to access a protected natural area.

Envisioning the future of technology integration for accessible hospitality and tourism

“…Some attempts have focused on how to apply technologies to enable accessible hospitality/tourism services, such as Sica et al (2021), who examined how to launch a new project to provide E-Parks that empower people with different disabilities to enjoy naturebased tourism like other tourists. This can enable information sharing and coordination among all actors for the co-creation of high-quality tourism experiences with tourists with disabilities.…”

Sustainable Product Development for Accessible Tourism: Case Studies Demonstrating the Need for Stakeholder Collaboration

“…According to Sica et al [17], accessibility represents a central element of sustainable tourism and simultaneously provides an exceptional business opportunity for tourism facilities, which corresponds to the arguments of Sisto et al [18] about accessible tourism representing an emerging segment of tourism demand. With regard to sustainable tourism development, travel for people with disabilities constitutes an opportunity to increase the overall quality of tourist facilities [17]. Although studies demonstrate the potential of accessible tourism [7,13], there is a lack of studies focusing on product development for people with disabilities with regard to the sustainable tourism concept.…”

“…The consideration of people with disabilities is based on socially, economically as well as ecologically sustainable implementation [7]. Therefore, accessible tourism is an important part of the global sustainable tourism agenda, with accessible tourism being defined as a form of responsible tourism to include people with disabilities [17]. For the UNWTO [16], accessibility in tourism must be a central component of all sustainable and responsible tourism policies.…”

The Industry-Academia Gap in Responsible Tourism Management: An Automated Content Analysis

“…However, the rapid increase in inbound and outbound travel has generated negative impacts globally. For the past 30 years, this situation has alarmed different tourism stakeholders and actors, prompting growing concerns about overcoming these effects by implementing sustainable practices (Sica, Sisto, Bianchi, & Cappelletti, 2021). Responsible tourism (RT) is deemed to be a viable alternative (Wheeller, 1991) to maintain the economic and social benefits while preserving the environmental conditions of tourist destinations (Burrai, Buda, & Stanford, 2019).…”