Attitudes of Employees in Tourism Towards Guests with Disabilities in Norway: A Survey Study

Associations for people with disabilities in Norway receive much feedback about negative experiences with travel. Little research has been done on this topic, and thus there is little knowledge about what can be done to improve these experiences. In this study, we have mapped travel experiences of people with disabilities and attitudes from employees in the tourism industry with two digital surveys. The questions were created in a workshop by collaboration with researchers, user representatives from a national association for people with disabilities, and employees from the tourism industry. The results show that some of the employees’ attitudes that are perceived as discriminatory by guests with disabilities are paradoxically caused by fear of doing something wrong. There seemed also to be a need for more knowledge about invisible disabilities, and a company-level and practice-based strategy for implementation of universal design in the customer service.