Ep. 41: How to Make Travel More Accessible, with Natasha Graves
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I’m so excited to welcome Natasha Graves to the show. Natasha is the founder of VacayAbility, a tourism website dedicated to inclusive travel. Users on the website can rate and review businesses and attractions based on different types of accessibility. By cultivating a culture of inclusivity, VacayAbility makes travel more accessible, and more welcoming, for all. It’s about time, right?
I first met Natasha on Clubhouse, and I’m so excited to connect with her today to talk about what she’s built, why she built it, and what she’s learned along the way.
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I really enjoyed my conversation with Natasha. My key takeaways were:
1. Globally, accessible travel represents a massive market that's been overlooked for too long. We're talking about 1 billion people who are disabled. Pre-pandemic, 27 million people who were disabled were also traveling, and planning 80 million trips, to the tune of $60 billion dollars. Why are we not meeting these travelers needs? As Natasha puts it, this is tight knit community, and guaranteed business for hotels and destinations who are set up to accommodate these guests, or at least making an effort.
2. Every small effort, like a phone call, a video uploaded on YouTube, an email response—these are the efforts that make a big difference. To Natasha's point, it's not a burden, it's not a loss of revenue, it's actually the opposite: it's a chance to get it right by simply seeing your customers eye to eye, and caring for them as you would your own family. If Disney can do it, and a family-owned hotel in Kenya can do it, there's certainly more that we all can be doing.
3. As hotel marketers, this guest survey—and meeting guests needs—has become a reoccurring theme. We're going through the motions, but are we listening, and responding to guests' needs? Instead of checking boxes to quantify a guest experience, we need to first ensure that every guest that passes through our doors has the ability to have a great time. That effort will make a world of difference.
As always, keep sharing your stories.
Links mentioned in this episode:
VacayAbility website.
@vacayability on Instagram.
VacayAbility on Facebook.
