CReAIT faces the common territorial of diversification and de-seasonalisation, through a strategy aimed at ensuring equal access to target sites for persons with special needs, “adding contents” to the tourists’ experiences; such contents are inspired by the cultural and historical heritage (artefacts, traditions, folklore), as well as linked to common cultural roots of the two Adriatic shores.
Persons with disabilities and seniors generally encounter a wide range of barriers due to the way environments and services are often designed, without considering these tourists’ different access requirements. Ensuring good accessibility is not a “favour” to tourists with access requirements but rather a game-changer for businesses, helping them in diversification and de-seasonalisation. Destinations and companies should see travellers with disabilities, seniors and, more generally tourists with special needs as important source markets for their businesses to thrive again.
To convey a fashionable communication of the implementation process, CreAIT exploits the culinary terminology, where:
– the “recipe” is the structure that describes the essential parts of the participatory process as a whole and the information that can be helpful for replication;
– the “ingredient” is the variety of assets (digital, communication, tangible, intangible, etc.) in different formats (social media, document, event, meeting, etc.) that is needed for the organisation and implementation of a recipe.
Starting with awareness raising on Accessible and Inclusive (AI) tourism, CReAIT develops recipes for additional services and solution of Accessible and Inclusive tourism, bringing together voices from tourism administrators and operators, tourists with special needs and local communities of two cities; the set of Accesible and Inclusive solutions will be sustained by Action Plan supporting policy makers towards achieving a wider diffusion of alternative and special interest tourism.
