Tourism for all: from customer to destination after Covid-19

In 1989, the Declaration on Human Rights and Disability (Stein, 2017; Degener, 2016) asked governments to implement policies to enable people with disabilities to engage in tourism and to include them in the tourism experiences. These two diverse tourism needs led to the birth of "tourism for all," aimed at helping all people to travel, despite his or her own abilities and needs. The "tourism for all" paradigm aims at standardizing these diversifications to ensure the quality of services and the well-being required by the tourists, but it also aims at making the experiences of tourists unique, trying to put the person at the center. The chapter's aim is to analyze how existing business models in tourism can be adapted to the "tourism for all" paradigm, thanks to which all people can benefit from the destination and its attractions. The chapter is structured into five sections. After the introduction section, the theoretical background is rooted in the literature on tourists with access needs and on the definition of factors that characterize a destination that applies the "tourism for all" paradigm. The first part shows how both the number of tourists with these needs and the spread of these tourists around the world are growing. The second part focuses on how destinations should be equipped to welcome these tourists so that those elements of quality and safety useful in the choice of destination are communicated. The fourth section is of empirical nature and illustrates the case study of Bibione, in the Veneto region (Italy), to explore how the tourism for all is slowly spreading in Italy. Bibione, in fact, represents a destination for all, putting into practice the new humanism and successfully changing the operational tools of hospitality. Finally, the conclusions describe the theoretical and practical implications of the work, as well as the limits of the research and possible future developments.