Date: 17 November 2014
Time: 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m
Venue: Hall of the Americas, Organization of American States
Description
Tourism is a rapidly growing industry and has become one of the main income generators for many countries in the global South. Ensuring the sustainability of this growing source of income depends heavily on ensuring that its social and economic impact is both positive and inclusive. Greater attention to accessibility in the tourism industry is a major part of this impact.
The Forum on Accessible Tourism will showcase and promote accessible tourism as an effective means for poverty eradication, employment generation and social inclusion. Successful models for improving accessibility in the tourism industry will also be presented during the Forum. Featuring industry players from the global South and North, the Forum will provide governments, NGOs and the private sector with a platform to showcase promising and replicable strategies for promoting and developing accessible tourism. By having this conversation in the context of the Global South-South Development Expo, the forum aims to provide a springboard for further engagement of all relevant stakeholders on developing strategies and policies that will effectively promote accessible tourism in countries, especially in the global South.
Taking the form of an interactive roundtable, the forum will feature successful policies and initiatives from Latin America, Europe, and North America.
Accessible Tourism and Sustainable Development: Making the Case
Travel and tourism account for more than 9 per cent of global economic output and account for around 10 per cent of jobs worldwide. With its real and potential contributions to social development and economic growth, it is important to ensure that tourism is developed in a sustainable and inclusive way.
By broadening the scope of the available tourist clientele, a focus on accessibility in the tourism industry enriches the economic contribution of tourism. Just as importantly, attention to accessibility in tourism brings a shift to the social and infrastructural strategies applied in the industry. Accessible and sustainable tourism products go beyond ad hoc accommodation to ensuring that all persons, regardless of their physical or cognitive needs, are able to use and enjoy the available amenities in an equitable manner. This broad attention to accessibility can have far reaching social impacts, not only addressing myriad challenges faced by the more than one billion people living with disabilities across the globe, but also encouraging a more multigenerational focus in development planning.
Accessible tourism is a form of tourism that involves a collaborative process among stakeholders. A successful tourism product requires effective partnerships and cooperation across many sectors at the national, regional and international levels. From idea to implementation, a single destination visit normally involves many factors, including accessing information, long-distance travel of various sorts, local transportation, accommodation, retail, and dining. The impact of accessible tourism thus goes beyond the tourist beneficiaries to the wider society, engraining accessibility into the social and economic ethos..
As the international community accelerates its efforts to realize the Millennium Development Goals and map out a forward-looking development framework beyond 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations, during the 2013 High-level Meeting on Disability and Development, underlined the importance of ensuring accessibility by following the universal design approach and removing barriers to persons with disabilities to inclusive development. For those countries where tourism has and can prove a viable contributor to economic development, encouraging public and private enterprises to make it easier for persons with disabilities to access to the essential goods and services driving the tourist industry not only helps to fulfill this commitment, it encourages partnerships, and also encourages the private sector to tap into the opportunities that remain untapped in addressing the needs of persons with disabilities.
Structure of the Forum
The DSPD Forum will take the form of an interactive round table discussion preceded by a keynote address. The keynote address will set the tone of the discussion, outlining the benefits of accessible tourism to the global South, both as good business, and smart development strategy, and will introduce the role of internal and external partnerships in developing accessible tourism policies and practice.
After the address the Forum will be open to discussion led by the moderator and the panel of innovators, who will present successful and developing initiatives of accessible tourism.
In a first round of the moderated discussion, the moderator will introduce the panelists and each panelist will have the opportunity to present and discuss their accessible tourism initiatives and the impact of these initiatives on inclusive sustainable development. After the initial round, the moderator will post a series of questions to panelists focusing on the role of tourism industry in countries and regions, current accessibility status, existing policies for accessible tourism, policy gaps, challenges for future development, importance of partnerships in the success of the initiative, sustainability of the initiative and the chance of replication. Finally, the moderator will open the floor to questions and comments that will allow participants the opportunity to explore the effective means of pursuing these and/or similar accessible tourism strategies in various contexts. Throughout the guided discussion, attention will also be paid to applying the lessons learned to broader development goals and partnership strategies for realizing sustainable development for all.
At the end, the moderator will summarize the discussions and will provide closing remarks including possible recommendations on effectively promoting accessible tourism as an inclusive development strategy and the role of partnerships and cooperation in this endeavour. A summary report with recommendations will be developed after the forum and will be available for all the participants of the forum on the web.
source: united nation