Introduction

The subject of this paper is tourism for the disabled, a topic that often leads to heated discussion amongst tourism businesses and those with disabilities. Unfortunately this phenomenon has not yet been surveyed, defined or recognised by those delivering commercial leisure and recreation services within the tourism industry. Consequently, tourism businesses do not recognise people with disabilities as potential customers and vice versa.

Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) and Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage both use the concept of a theatrical performance as a metaphor for life. This theory has been applied to a functioning tourism system and following the ideas of Goffman, Pine and Gilmore, this chapter draws out new ideas examining tourism as a staged business. This is done using a model which conceptualises any tourism enterprise, facility or service process as a region, divided into front and back stage on which all encounters and interactions, or performances, take place (Arola, 2003, 2005), and where the actors are:

• management and front-line staff; and

• where members of the audience are customers – disabled or non-disabled.

The general objective of this research is to examine the role of disabled people as consumers in the contexts of inclusion, legislation, and commercial tourism (Arola, 2003). The research also aims to:

• define the term disability in the context of tourism;

• examine the experiences of disabled customers on the tourism stage;

• examine and clarify the interrelated attitudes and behavioural patterns between four different groups involved in service processes within the hotel restaurant setting (management, front-line staff, customers with disabilities and able-bodied customers); and

• an overall objective of the research is to assess and examine the encounters of disabled customers on the tourism stage.