Tourism for All: From Customer to Destination after COVID-19

In the last years, destinations are designing and developing many solutions to meet the needs of a new era of tourists. These experiences are addressed to all people, but they are especially relevant for those tourists with disabilities or special needs. It is, in fact, to underline that, despite the tourist demand is expected to reduce very much due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the tourism sector, the desire to travel and explore tourist destinations has not stopped, and also the more fragile tourists are increasingly interested to travel. Based on these assumptions, this paper aims to analyze the business model of tourism supply systems that devote peculiar attention to the concept of inclusion, thanks to which all people can benefit of the destination and of its attractions. After a description of the dynamics that characterize the current tourist demand, with a focus on the role that the Covid-19 pandemic has having on the tourism flows at national and international level, the paper addresses its attention to the trends and peculiarities of tourists with disabilities and special needs. In detail, the paper wants to verify how the destinations are planning a tourism supply system able to meet the new needs of this specific target, in order to protect the autonomy and independence of the person. Above all to global level such requirement is increased, and many destinations are activating a series of tourist services completely new and technologically advanced to answer such demand. These new offers, however, do not only benefit persons with disabilities or special needs; they benefits all: all tourists can live innovative and very participatory and immersive experiences, such as to be preferred over traditional tourist products. These new forms of tourism are the subject of the third part of the contribution, aimed at empirically verifying how a destination can be able to transform the challenges and opportunities linked to the tourism for people with disabilities in its strength. In this vein, the paper explores the case of Bibione, the first Italian tourist destination to have embarked on a path that guides the entire local tourist chain in the direction of full accessibility of the tourist destination as a whole. A project that has already created a positive contamination in the Veneto region, laying the foundations for the creation of the longest accessible and inclusive coast in Italy.