1 week Accessible & Inclusive Travel Online Course by the GSTC

Dates: November 6-12, 2023
Time: Live sessions at a time comfortable for those in American and Asian time zone
Where: Online
Language: English

Live sessions scheduled for the following days, from 20:00 EST.

We highly recommend attending the live, virtual sessions. However, the sessions will be recorded and participants will be able to watch the recordings any time during the course period.

ABOUT THE COURSE

Accessible & Inclusive Travel Online Course

The Accessible and Inclusive Travel Course is designed to

• apprise participants of the size and potential of the accessible and inclusive travel market segment
• dispel myths regarding what people with disability and others with access needs want to do, and can and can’t do
• give a deeper insight into the make-up of this market segment
• boost confidence in catering to people with disability and access needs by helping you understand the needs of travellers with different functional and cognitive impairments, including senior travellers
• provide practical tips and guidance on how to better attract, serve and retain customers with access needs

Participants who complete the course will gain a greater understanding of how to provide accessible and inclusive experiences for people with disability and others with access needs, and thereby gain a competitive advantage, increase their market share and boost their revenue.

TRAINER

Martin Heng

Born in Birmingham, UK, Martin has a BA and MA in English literature from Cambridge University and an MA in Communications from RMIT University, Melbourne. He left England in 1987 and lived, worked and travelled around the world before migrating to Australia in 1997. He worked for Lonely Planet from 1999 to 2020 in numerous roles, including seven years as Editorial Manager.

A bicycle accident on his 20km commute to work in 2010 left him a quadriplegic. He was Lonely Planet’s Accessible Travel Manager & Editorial Adviser from 2013 to 2020, in which role he published a number of accessible travel titles, including the world’s largest collection of Accessible Travel Online Resources, which was cited as best practice by the UNWTO, and an accessible guide to Rio de Janeiro that was supplied to all athletes participating in the 2016 Paralympics. He also commissioned and co-wrote Accessible Melbourne, Accessible Brighton, Accessible Bristol, Accessible Edinburgh and Accessible Glasgow.[1]

Since 2014 he has become a regular speaker at travel conferences held by such global travel NGOs as UNWTO, WTTC, IATA and PATA. In 2021, he authored Tourism Access and Inclusion: Best Practice Guidelines for Tourism MSMEs for APEC, complemented by a series of three online workshops featuring many of the world’s accessible travel luminaries. In 2022, he authored the Accessible and Inclusive Host Handbook for the Australian Tourism Export Council, complemented by a series of training modules that he created and delivered.

For the last six years he has served as chair of the board of IDEAS, a NSW-based nonprofit providing information to and advocacy services for the disability communities throughout Australia. He was appointed to the Victorian Disability Advisory Council in October 2019, and reappointed in 2022 to advise the Victorian government on matters related to disability.

Guest Speakers

Carolyn Childs

Carolyn Childs is the CEO of MyTravelResearch.com and is a futurist and strategist.
She has more than 30 years’ helping destinations, travel and tourism businesses achieve their goals by using research and other evidence to guide strategy and planning. She has conducted projects in more than 35 countries on every inhabited continent.
In 2011, she co-founded MyTravelResearch.com to make tools, approaches and insights accessible to everyone in the industry at all levels of budget. In 2017, this included working with Tourism Research Australia, the Government of Victoria (TEVE) and Tourism and Events Queensland to understand and size the market for Accessible Tourism. She is the curator of the MyTravelResearch.com 50+ trends impacting travel and tourism.
She is a regular top-rated speaker at conferences around the world including on accessible tourism for audiences as diverse as the Mumbrella Travel Marketing Summit and AITCAP 2021. She is passionate about this sector as one of the most exciting business opportunities of the 21 st Century.
She is the winner of the 2020 TTRA APAC Chapter Sue Beeton Award for Outstanding Contribution to the work of the Chapter in advancing the role of tourism research in the APAC region.

Elias Lebbos

Elias joined Travellers Aid in 2007 and he took on the role of CEO in 2014. Prior to that, he held different state-level roles at the Australian Red Cross. Elias’ working style complements his professional interests: he is a well-rounded senior executive who consciously adopts an innately humanistic approach that resonates at all levels of the organisation he leads. He believes this style of leadership promotes highly effective relationships both internally and externally, and results from time spent gaining an ever-better understanding his key stakeholders and their needs.
His emphasis is on linking practical with sustainable solutions, and building a capable and confident workforce, which allows him to develop and drive a strong, high-performance culture. His decisiveness and outcome-focused approach allow him to be a strong agent for change, both internally and externally.
Elias’s key focus as CEO of Travellers Aid is on identifying new and innovative solutions and strategic partnerships to achieve access and inclusion in public transport, events and tourism.

REGISTRATION DETAILS

Course Registration Fees

The early-bird registration fees (available through September 25th, 2023*) for this course are:

• US$ 385 per person (Non-member)
• US$ 365 per person (GSTC Member**)

After September 26th, 2023:

• US$ 415 per person (Non-member)
• US$ 385 per person (GSTC Member)

*Please note that the early-bird deadline is 11:59pm UTC+7.
**For GSTC Organization members, the above member discount is available to all staff members and can be used for an unlimited number of times.

What’s Included

As part of your registration, you will receive training materials and access to the online training platform.

DISCOUNT OPTIONS

Group Discounts

You can sign up multiple people at the same time when registering online. Select the number of people you would like register, and you can enter contact details for each participant on the form.

We also offer a discount for each group purchase of more than 5 seats.

• 5-10 people: US$ 230 per person.

If you would like to sign up as a group of 5 and more, please contact us (training@gstcouncil.org) for more details.

Need-Based Discounts

We offer a limited number of need-based discounts to current students and professionals who demonstrate genuine needs. To apply, please submit this application form.