Research concerning blind people’s tourism experiences is limited. This study explores blind people’s experiences with respect to four travel components: hotel accommodations, restaurants, flights and museums. The study employed a qualitative approach and data were subject to thematic content analysis. The findings indicate that blind tourists contend with diverse physical and social difficulties. The behavior of tourist staff, an issue that has received minimal attention in the literature about service provision for people with disabilities, was found to be a crucial element in blind people’s tourist experiences. The paper concludes with implications for research and practice, based on the methods implemented by the participants to cope with the reported challenges.

Introduction

The tourism literature is increasingly turning its attention to tourists with diverse physical disabilities (Chou & Chao, 2007; Eichhorn et al., 2008; Yates, 2007). However, there is a dearth of studies about disabled people’s perceptions of the tourism experiences. Furthermore, most existing studies focus on wheelchair users, ignoring other segments of the disabled population such as blind or deaf people. This study, centring on blind people’s perceptions of the tourism experiences, is aimed at minimising this gap.

This chapter is part of a series of studies documenting the tourism experiences of Israelis with diverse disabilities. The chapter addresses elements which play an important role in blind people’s tourism experiences including flights, hotels, hotel restaurants and museums.

Conceptualising blindness, disability and tourism experiences

The current study adopts Nicolle and Peters’s approach to disability (1999: 122) which asserts that being handicapped is a result of ‘a mismatch’ between the individual’s needs and abilities, and the environment. The importance of the link between the individual and the environment was used in the present study with regard to the term ‘disability’. This approach considers the human environment affecting the process through which things are done.