Tour guides experiences with tourists with disabilities in Zimbabwe.

Abstract

The market of tourists with disabilities is rapidly growing globally but little is known about tour guides experiences with people with disabilities. The group consists of a sizeable and escalating percentage of the travel market, implying that there is need for the tour guiding industry to have the capability to cater for them. The study aimed at identifying the experiences that tour guides had when guiding tourists with disabilities, the challenges that they faced and the concerns of the tourists with disabilities during tours. The market of tourists with disabilities seem to have less holiday offers or alternative activities offered in the tour guiding industry and thus reduces the level of experience encountered with them in the tour guiding sector. The developing countries have had very little research on the experiences that tour guides have with tourists with disabilities despite having tourism literature that supports tour guides and their contribution to tourist experience in the industry. Tourists see sites through the eyes of the guide who plays an important role in creating their experience. The study used face to face interviews and also made use of focus groups interviews to get an in-depth understanding from the tour guides. Non-probability, namely convenience and judgmental sampling method was also used with tour guides of museums and national parks.The study findings indicated that tour guiding facilities had limited activities that are offered to people with disabilities, physical disability as the only disability that the sector was currently catering for despite the existence of other disabilities and the main barriers being inaccessible environment and equipment. The study concluded that the industry had inadequate information about tourists with disabilities and thus was failing to fully serve the market which was the reason why it catered for the physically disabled only, experienced such barriers and offered a limited number of activities to tourists with disabilities. Lastly the study recommended that the tour guiding facilities offer training to their guides, provide and create a user friendly environment and equipment so as to cater for all kinds of tourists with disabilities.