Attitudes of Future Tourism Sector Employees Towards Organise Accessible Tourism

The aim of this paper is to show a theoretical approach to the evolution of concepts perceiving disability, taking into account the medical, social, and geographical models, as the basis for the development of principles concerning the organisation of accessible tourism for people with disabilities (PwD). The main research objective was to identify the current attitudes of future, potential employees in the tourism (tourism and recreation students at the time of the study) towards accessible tourism. The study was based on surveys performed in May 2013 at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (UAM, Poland) and the State University in Irkutsk (ИГУ, Russia), a total sample of 216 people. The main section of the survey contained four questions regarding issues such as: optimal ways to organise tourism products for people with a disability; attitudes towards spending leisure time together with people with a disability; and specific requirements concerning the introduction of various types of improvements in tourism products aimed at people with a disability. In both cases, the results revealed that future tourism employees hold attitudes which are prevailingly open and positive towards the needs of tourists with disabilities. However, the hypothesis that the main factor influencing a reluctance to enter into contact with PwD is a lack of experience in this area, resulting in insufficient knowledge of what conditions the behaviour of PwD was also confirmed. This is a highly significant conclusion which should consider if mandatory educational programmes in the field of tourism and recreation studies are to be improved.