The charitable arm of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), GBTA Foundation, has launched the GBTA Accessibility Toolkit, a guide to help travel managers and buyers create more accessible policies and practices in their business travel programmes.
The GBTA Accessibility Toolkit contains seven modules on industry best practices around travel policy, traveller communication, supplier engagement and point-of-sale, key challenges and opportunities in accessible business travel, a glossary of terms, and industry case studies.
For many business travellers, accessibility requirements may also be hidden, such as chronic pain, neurodiversity and mental health, and 70 per cent of travel managers do not know or will usually not estimate how many of their travellers have accessibility requirements. Adding to the challenge is the business travel industry lacks universal accessibility standards, therefore leaving many companies to address the issue in an ad-hoc manner.
“Addressing accessibility challenges needs to be a priority for the business travel industry, as there is still a significant gap in understanding business traveller differences and how these translate into various needs,” said Delphine Millot, managing director of the GBTA Foundation and senior vice president for sustainability and advocacy at GBTA.
“Our GBTA Accessibility Toolkit is designed to help companies address this issue, in turn enhancing the business traveller experience, maximising the ROI of business travel, and supporting the delivery of travel services from across the supplier landscape.”
As part of the GBTA Accessibility Toolkit, the GBTA Foundation has introduced five Calls to Action aimed at creating a more accessible business travel industry. These actions urge suppliers and travel managers to perform an accessibility self-assessment to identify areas for improvement.
Additionally, travel managers should enhance their systems to transparently collect and confidentially store accessibility information from travellers. They should also establish a proactive and transparent support structure for responding to travellers who disclose their accessibility needs.
Moreover, the business travel industry should work together to develop a universal coding system that provides detailed accessibility information commonly required by travellers.
The Accessibility Toolkit is available at https://gbtafoundation.org/accessibility/.
