Introduction

This chapter seeks to understand the tourist experiences of people with disabilities, including the seniors who also constitute the accessible tourism market. Tourism experiences can be viewed through many approaches. The following discussion is situated within the framework of critical theory in tourism studies and critical disability studies theory, both of which focus on ends rather than means, examining social power structures with a commitment to emancipation. The lived experience of the person is the subject matter and within the approaches of critical tourism and critical disability studies, the lived experience is a bodily experience. This chapter examines the embodied experience of those with disabilities within the tourism context. For the purposes of this chapter, the authors take Osborne’s (2000: 51) definition of embodiment where ‘“embodiment” is used to describe the way in which the bodily bases of individuals’ actions and interactions are socially structured: that is, embodiment is a social as well as natural process’. In this case, embodiment as it relates to disabilities includes mobility, hearing, vision, cognitive/ learning, sensitivity and mental health but, in the developing field of critical disability and tourism studies, the areas most researched are mobility and vision. While it is recognised that disabled/non-disabled subjectivity intersects with other subjectivities such as gender, age, culture, ethnicity, sexuality, economic position etc., a dearth of research in tourism and disability studies (and the word length of this chapter) prevent a discussion of these intersections.

Boorstin (1987) in The Lost Art of Travel distinguished between travellers of the past and today’s tourists, noting that ‘until almost the present century, travel abroad was uncomfortable, difficult and expensive’ (p. 80). Indeed, the word travel comes from travail – ‘meaning “trouble”, “work” or “torment”’ (Boorstin, 1987: 85). He viewed the traveller of the past as someone who worked at the experience, whereas the tourist of today waits for things to happen to them.