| Travel and tourism is a ;The objectives of this study were: (1) to identify of opinion leadership within the disabled traveler population, (2) to explore tourism information needs as they exist in this population, (3) determine the extent to which various travel information sources are likely to be employed for travel planning, and (4) to identify characteristics of and differences between the general population and the disabled traveler. Data were collected in a mail survey. A total of 578 usable questionnaires were collected (an achieved 24% response rate).;Each objective was met. Identification of opinion leadership within the disabled sample occurred at a rate of 58%. Opinion leaders receive necessary information when making hotel reservations and when inquiring about disability services, but indicated that they do not receive necessary disability service information when using 800 numbers, through web sites or when making airline reservations. Interestingly, even with the indication that they do not receive the necessary disability service information from the web; the disabled sample indicated the web and electronic media as their travel information sources of choice for travel planning. A disturbing finding was the disparity between household income levels between the groups, with the disabled population lagging far behind.;In addition to these study objectives, additional findings pertain to preferred trip length, geographic location of travel destinations, travel and repeat travel behavior, travel party composition and the self perception of travel experience and travel skill. Severity level of opinion leader's disability and how this influenced travel behavior is also included in the study.;From these results, tourism marketing product intervention program could be developed to aide in development of programs and strategies to expand services to this underserved market and to train opinion leaders to influence their followers to select a particular tourism destination and hospitality services. |
