Introduction

In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), tourist accessibility policy is in the hands of Tourism Flanders. Tourism Flanders is a Flemish governmental institution whose mission is to promote tourism in Flanders. The key task of Tourism Flanders is promoting and marketing Flanders as a tourist destination at home and abroad. Our foreign offices in the major European cities and beyond play a key role in this. Another important task is developing tourism products in Flanders. This is achieved through quality control and the issuance of permits and classification stars, and through product innovation by means of direct investment, co-funding or subsidies. The accessibility of tourist services in Flanders is a key part of the Flemish policy on tourism. People with a disability are an important target group for the tourist industry in Flanders, especially from a forward-looking perspective (see Figure 3.1).

A recent study by the University of Surrey (Buhalis et al. , 2005), puts the potential accessible travel market at more than 134 million people (or 27% of the EU population), with expected tourism revenues upwards of €83 billion for European travellers alone. Due to the strong increase of the ageing population, the number of persons with disabilities will increase significantly. This is a target group that cannot be ignored by the tourist policy. Not only the sheer size of this group, but also the way disabled people travel, is important for our tourist sector: they spend at least as much on travel and leisure as other people, they rarely travel alone and often dispose of more free time to travel and they prefer low season. Still, the above mentioned percentages are surprising. Disabled tourists are not an unknown phenomenon, but the importance of this target group is not visible yet in practice. Tourism Flanders wanted to know the reasons for this.