DISABLED TOURISM FROM THE VIEWS OF TOURISM STAKEHOLDERS: THE CASE OF KONYA

Abstract

Like healthy individuals, people with disabilities also need to travel to rest, have fun, to travel. Participation in tourism in terms of disabled individuals has an important place in terms of meeting their stated needs and ensuring their place in the society. The first condition of meeting these needs depends on the awareness of the employees of the tourism sector and their readiness to provide services to the disabled people as infrastructure. In addition, in order to increase the participation of disabled individuals in tourism, it is necessary to create an accessible environment by making tourism stakeholders conscious. In this study, face to face interview technique, which is one of the qualitative research methods, is used as data collection tool. In this context, interviews were conducted with the employees of the Directorate of Culture and Tourism in Konya, the employees of Konya Metropolitan Municipality, the staff of TURSAB Konya, the managers of the department in the hotels operating in the province of Konya, travel agencies employees and the local people. Finally, the results were evaluated and recommendations were made. According to the findings of the study, it is seen that the institutions and enterprises where the participants work are suitable for use by disabled individuals and Konya is the most favorable city geographically for disabled individuals. However, it is seen that the local administrations are more inclined to this issue than before but they also have deficiencies.