GSTC Course AIT

1 week Accessible & Inclusive Travel Online Course by the GSTC

Dates: July 3-9, 2023
Time: Live sessions at a time suitable for those in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Africa time zone
Where: Online
Language: English

Live sessions scheduled for the following days:

We highly recommend attending the live, virtual sessions. However, the sessions will be recorded and participants will be able to watch the recordings any time during the course period.

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About the Course | Trainer & Presenters | Registration Details

ABOUT THE COURSE

Accessible & Inclusive Travel Online Course

The Accessible and Inclusive Travel Course is an invaluable resource for tourism businesses and organizations operating in the tourism market. Whether you’re a government body, a destination management organization, or an individual tour operator, this course is tailored to meet your needs, regardless of your experience in the accessible and inclusive travel market. By completing this course, you will develop a deeper understanding of how to deliver accessible and inclusive experiences for individuals with disabilities and others with access needs, allowing you to gain competitive advantage, expand your market share, increase your revenue, and future-proof your operations.

The Accessible and Inclusive Travel Course will:

  • Enable participants to gain further understanding of the size and potential of the accessible and inclusive travel market segment.
  • Dispel myths regarding the abilities of people with disabilities and others with access needs.
  • Provide further insight into the composition of this market segment.
  • Enhance confidence in serving individuals with disabilities and access needs by providing a comprehensive understanding of the requirements of travellers with various functional and cognitive impairments, including seniors.
  • Provide practical tips and guidance on how to better attract, serve and retain customers with access needs.

TRAINER

Martin Heng

Born in Birmingham, UK, Martin has a BA and MA in English literature from Cambridge University and an MA in Communications from RMIT University, Melbourne. He left England in 1987 and lived, worked and travelled around the world before migrating to Australia in 1997. He worked for Lonely Planet from 1999 to 2020 in numerous roles, including seven years as Editorial Manager.

A bicycle accident on his 20km commute to work in 2010 left him a quadriplegic. He was Lonely Planet’s Accessible Travel Manager & Editorial Adviser from 2013 to 2020, in which role he published a number of accessible travel titles, including the world’s largest collection of Accessible Travel Online Resources, which was cited as best practice by the UNWTO, and an accessible guide to Rio de Janeiro that was supplied to all athletes participating in the 2016 Paralympics. He also commissioned and co-wrote Accessible Melbourne, Accessible Brighton, Accessible Bristol, Accessible Edinburgh and Accessible Glasgow.[1]

Since 2014 he has become a regular speaker at travel conferences held by such global travel NGOs as UNWTO, WTTC, IATA and PATA. In 2021, he authored Tourism Access and Inclusion: Best Practice Guidelines for Tourism MSMEs for APEC, complemented by a series of three online workshops featuring many of the world’s accessible travel luminaries. In 2022, he authored the Accessible and Inclusive Host Handbook for the Australian Tourism Export Council, complemented by a series of training modules that he created and delivered.

For the last six years he has served as chair of the board of IDEAS, a NSW-based nonprofit providing information to and advocacy services for the disability communities throughout Australia. He was appointed to the Victorian Disability Advisory Council in October 2019, and reappointed in 2022 to advise the Victorian government on matters related to disability.

Guest Speakers

Chris Veitch

Chris Veitch is an independent consultant with wide experience in the field of accessible tourism. After gaining a First Class degree in Tourism Management, he was a policy executive in the English Tourism Council (ETC) managing projects to improve the accessibility of tourism in England. In 2003 he set up his own practice.
Chris has working closely with the European Commission and supports VisitEngland, Visit Scotland and Visit Wales, to help develop and promote Accessible Tourism in the UK.
He has collaborated in writing a number of papers and book chapters on this subject and is a regular guest speaker at conferences in Europe and beyond. He has worked extensively in Georgia. He is also a guest lecturer at universities in the UK and elsewhere.
In Australia he has helped promote Accessible Tourism with Tourism Australia, Austrade, Visit Melbourne, Local Govt New South Wales, Queensland Tourism and Events, Gold Coast Management and Commonwealth Games organisers. In 2018 he was a keynote speaker at a Universal Design conference in Brisbane.
From 2015 to 2020 he was a Vice-Chair of the UK Charity Tourism For All. He is a member of the European Network for Accessible Tourism (ENAT) and England’s Inclusive Tourism Action Group (EITAG)

Carolyn Childs

Carolyn Childs is the CEO of MyTravelResearch.com and is a futurist and strategist.
She has more than 30 years’ helping destinations, travel and tourism businesses achieve their goals by using research and other evidence to guide strategy and planning. She has conducted projects in more than 35 countries on every inhabited continent.
In 2011, she co-founded MyTravelResearch.com to make tools, approaches and insights accessible to everyone in the industry at all levels of budget. In 2017, this included working with Tourism Research Australia, the Government of Victoria (TEVE) and Tourism and Events Queensland to understand and size the market for Accessible Tourism. She is the curator of the MyTravelResearch.com 50+ trends impacting travel and tourism.
She is a regular top-rated speaker at conferences around the world including on accessible tourism for audiences as diverse as the Mumbrella Travel Marketing Summit and AITCAP 2021. She is passionate about this sector as one of the most exciting business opportunities of the 21 st Century.
She is the winner of the 2020 TTRA APAC Chapter Sue Beeton Award for Outstanding Contribution to the work of the Chapter in advancing the role of tourism research in the APAC region.

Jane Cooper

Jane Cooper, Managing Director of Access & Inclusion UK, is an access consultant, training and development and business development professional with first-hand, lived experience of disability.
An evolution of her former business, Access For All UK, Jane’s new company specialises in providing access consultancy, training, access auditing and design appraisal services to clients across the UK, with a particular focus on accessible tourism. The company is a member of the European Network for Accessible Tourism (ENAT), the Access Association and the Continuing Professional Development Accreditation Service (CPD).
After gaining an honours degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology, Jane studied at Sheffield Business School where she achieved a post-graduate diploma in Human Resources Management and became a Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development (Chartered MCIPD).
Jane’s Personnel and Development career saw her join Boots the Chemists’ Head Office team, where she was a Management Training Specialist before being appointed as a Business Improvement Manager, Business Process Design consultant and latterly the Mobilisation and Communications lead for key strategic projects.
Jane’s eldest child has a unique chromosome disorder and is severely autistic. She therefore brings first-hand, ‘lived’ experience and insight to everything the company offers. Inspired to make a difference, in 2003 Jane led a fundraising campaign which raised over £1 million pounds to build a specialist therapy school at Ashgate Croft School in Derbyshire. In the same year she began campaigning for Changing Places toilets for severely disabled people and has supported the official campaign for these facilities which was launched three years later, ever since.
In 2013, Jane co-founded Accessible Derbyshire: an accessible tourism website which brings together accessibility information on Derbyshire and the Peak District to create accessible itineraries for families like her own. One year later, Access For All UK was formed, working with clients large and small around the country to support them in improving their welcome for people with additional access requirements. The company’s clients included VisitEngland, VisitScotland, The National Trust, English Heritage, The UK’s National Parks, Amazon, Merlin Entertainments and many more.
In addition to her current business role, Jane is also a guest lecturer in accessible tourism at Sheffield Hallam University, where she is an Honorary Executive in Residence. Jane has been a judge for a number of UK tourism awards including the VisitPeakDistrict and Derbyshire Awards, The Welcome to Yorkshire White Rose Awards and the BALPPA Awards. In 2018, Jane was invited to speak at the World Summit on Accessible Tourism in Brussels.
As well as being a reviewer for the Rough Guide to Accessible Britain, Jane is a founder member of the England Inclusive tourism Action Group and writes for Autism Parenting magazine in the United States. Her personal achievements also include being the recipient of an Excellence in the Community Award.
The extensive personal development Jane has undertaken includes Designing for Neurodiversity, Access Auditor training, Business Process Redesign, Facilitation and Advanced Facilitation Skills, Team Leader training, Continuous Improvement Techniques, Presentation Skills, Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), Coaching Skills, Problem-solving Techniques, Consultancy Skills and New Approaches to Learning Design.

REGISTRATION DETAILS

Course Registration Fees

The early-bird registration fees (available through May 4th, 2023*) for this course are:

  • US$ 385 per person (Non-member)
  • US$ 365 per person (GSTC Member**)

After May 5th, 2023:

  • US$ 415 per person (Non-member)
  • US$ 385 per person (GSTC Member)

*Please note that the early-bird deadline is 11:59pm UTC+7.
**For GSTC Organization members, the above member discount is available to all staff members and can be used for an unlimited number of times.

What’s Included

As part of your registration, you will receive training materials and access to the online training platform.

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DISCOUNT OPTIONS

Group Discounts

You can sign up multiple people at the same time when registering online. Select the number of people you would like register, and you can enter contact details for each participant on the form.

We also offer a discount for each group purchase of more than 5 seats.

  • 5-10 people: US$ 230 per person.

If you would like to sign up as a group of 5 and more, please contact us ([email protected]) for more details.

Need-Based Discounts

We offer a limited number of need-based discounts to current students and professionals who demonstrate genuine needs. To apply, please submit this application form.