Accessible tourism in Jordan: travel constrains and motivations

Mamoon Allan

doi:10.54055/ejtr.v10i.182

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to identify the motivations and travel constrains for a sample of tourists with disabilities in Jordan. A quantitative study was conducted employing an onsite intercept questionnaire. However, the questionnaire was completed and returned by 226 members of the research cohort in Jordan. The findings of this study show that the main intrinsic motivations for the respondents to travel were escape, followed by relaxation, and enjoyment, respectively. Additionally, it found that their main extrinsic motivation was the identified regulations of extrinsic motivation and they expressed a low level of amotivation. The results of this study also indicate that travel intrinsic constrains had the prominent influence on the study cohort. The study’s findings were expected to be helpful to better understanding the tourists with different types of disabilities in Jordan.

Highlights

Tourism represents a basic human right and should be accessible to all people (Richards et al, 2010)
In term of the individual items measuring the travel constrains for the respondents, the results indicate that the item ‘Travel imposes requirements that are beyond my capabilities’ was, which is referred to the intrinsic constrains received the highest mean score of all the travel constrains items (M = 4.17, SD = 0.968), whilst the item ‘Fear of getting hurt’ which related to the interactive constrains polled the lowest mean score (M= 2.95, SD= 1.22)
Overall, this study was carried out to enhance the existing body of knowledge addressing issues related to development of accessible tourism in Jordan

Summary

Introduction

Tourism represents a basic human right and should be accessible to all people (Richards et al, 2010). The international statistics approves that the rate of people with disabilities are growing worldwide and they represent about 10% of the whole world's population which equals 650 million people globally (Disabled World, 2012). Tourists with disabilities are considered as a growing tourism niche market and their market share is worth almost 117 billion USD per annum (Bizjak et al, 2011). In the context of the Middle East, the state of people with disabilities is still commonly considered from a medical and charity approach, within a setting of a very narrow and frequently outdated legislative and policy frameworks (Axelsson & Barrett, 2009). Jordan was considered as the first nation in the Middle East to act out disability-

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Discussion

Conclusion