Friday, February 12, 2016
It has been an arduous time trying to plan a trip through a
travel agent. I usually don’t go through one, mainly because I haven’t been
able to find one that can do disability travel well. I end up doing more work
in order to finalize things. You know how it is when you talk with a 3rd
or 4th party. The communication breaks down very quickly.
This is the first time I have booked through a conventional
travel agency. Of course they all say they are familiar with disabled friendly travel,
but this is sadly untrue. The tour operators are even farther behind in the
realm of accessible travel. In any other industry, if you take out the disabled
part of the equation, by overlooking this huge market the
customer service people would be fired. Therein lies the problem. As soon as
disability is mentioned the idea that it is more work, more expensive and that
there is no market begins to predominate the conversation.
The online company I wanted to book some day trips through
didn’t ring true after many months of emailing back and forth. They started asking some questions for information that seemed more like a scam. What angers me, if they are crooked, is that they are targeting
people with disability.The months arranging via email in the
end was a waste of time. I had to start from the beginning. Now I only have
2 weeks before my departure to scramble for accessible day trips in the Algarve.
It has definitely been a learning process this time around.
I am sure that once I am there I can get a better sense of where to find
accessible tourism and how it works. I will be more discretionary with travel
agents. It really pays to find ones that are specifically focused on disabled
travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment