Costa Rica moves “on wheels” towards more accessible tourism

Imagine a sightseeing tour of Costa Rica that includes a visit to the Poás Volcano National Park, a tour through a coffee plantation, taking a gastronomic walk through Barrio Escalante in San José, participating in a wagon painting workshop in Sarchí, enjoying the hot springs and suspension bridges in La Fortuna de San Carlos with the Arenal Volcano as part of the landscape. Add to the experience visiting an organic farm, receiving surf lessons in Jacó and finally, taking a species sighting tour along the Tárcoles River and returning to the Juan Santamaría airport.

Now perform the same exercise and adapt this entire experience to a group of tourists and influencers in wheelchairs, from the United States, who visit our country from October 15 to 22, to demonstrate the improvement and advances in the offer of accessible tourism. in Costa Rica in different areas of the country, as well as services such as lodging, transportation, tours, beaches and conservation areas with accessibility.

These experiences in Costa Rica will be the inspiration for all the content that, since last Sunday, October 15, Kelcie Millet (Chronic Explorer), Kevin Ortiz (Wheelchairkev) and Kirk Williams (Impact.Overland), three recognized influencers in the accessible travel and tourism. Together they have a reach of approximately 250 thousand followers.

“So far my experience has been surprising and I was observing the volcano. I was quite impressed with how accessible everything was. Everything has been amazing from a hotel with good access for people with disabilities and I was struck by how easy it was to get my wheelchair up and down to see the volcano,” described Ortiz, one of the influencers participating in this specialized familiarization trip. , who shared his experience visiting the Poás Volcano.

They are also accompanied by Kerry Peterson, winner of a previous contest organized in the Wheel The World community, with 2,500 new users participating and registering, all potential tourists interested in visiting Costa Rica in the future.

Tourist destinations improve accessibility

This initiative is part of the actions of a cooperative promotion campaign between the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) and the organization Wheel The World, (Rueda el Mundo), one of the most prominent operators in the world, specialized in tourists. who seek to visit destinations in wheelchairs or with some other motor disability. This alliance has the support of the Costa Rican Accessible Tourism Network, who organized the itineraries and carried out complementary activities with the visitors, such as an inclusive fashion catwalk, shared the scope of the creation of accessible beaches and organized an adapted surfing lesson in Jaco.

“Costa Rica has shown a lot of interest in making the tourism industry in the country much more accessible, through coordinated efforts with organizations such as the Costa Rican Accessible Tourism Network, with which we have worked with Wheel The World to digitize and document the offer and itineraries available so that people with disabilities can come and enjoy their holidays without limits. Diversification is important for a destination with high intensity and flow of tourists, especially because the population of people with disabilities in the world exceeds one billion people, which indicates that the potential for return on investment is enormous and it is the right thing to do. to do, from the human sense of wanting to include others,” explained Arturo Gaona, director of Strategic Alliances at Wheel The World.

For Alberto López, General Manager of the ICT, the way we understand tourism is as a need and a right that every person has. A need for all people to recharge their batteries, to revitalize and regenerate, and a right of every person, without differentiation of any kind, to enjoy rest and leisure activities. López emphasized that “our tourism model is based on the axes of innovation, inclusion and sustainability and within inclusion, accessibility is of utmost importance and therefore we must redouble promotional efforts to communicate the permanent improvements and advances that we have, being , increasingly aware of the importance of generating more universal tourism so that all people can live unique experiences, enjoying the beaches, National Parks, nature and the multiple outdoor activities throughout our country. territory".

For his part, Emilio Zúñiga, director of the Accessible Tourism Network, the main challenge is to “convince and encourage the rest of the value chain, as well as the tourism union, that there is a growing opportunity to receive a market segment wide and new of people with disabilities. "The suppliers, hoteliers, tourist attractions and transporters who decide to make the investment of adapting their infrastructures and tours to be able to receive them as part of a National Tourism Development Plan of the ICT."

According to them, projections after this trip aim to attract at least 250 new travelers or people with disabilities in 2023 through the Wheel The World platform. In addition, the generation of audiovisual content is planned for promotional actions in digital marketing aimed at the US market, with the purpose of increasing group trips and carrying out an awareness campaign through the media in the United States. The objective is to position Costa Rica as an alternative in permanent progress in accessible tourism.

It should be noted that the joint work between Wheel The World, the Costa Rican Accessible Tourism Network and the ICT began in 2019, accumulating achievements from joint work to create more accessible spaces in our country, improving positioning and a change in consciousness so that the axis of sustainability becomes an innovative axis and makes us stand out in the international arena, a situation recognized by obtaining the global award for Costa Rica in 2021 as “The most accessible destination” by Lonely Planet.

Finally, one of Wheel The World's mottos indicates that “at the end of the day, due to aging, at the end of our lives we are all going to need a little bit of accessibility or a lot, and it is better to prepare now, the services in the destinations for all people who need to consume accessibility due to some physical condition,” Gaona concluded.