Inclusive travel as a commercial strategy

Inclusion in travel is often talked about as the right thing to do - which it is. But it’s also something else: one of the most overlooked commercial opportunities in the industry.

For the people trying to push inclusion internally (such as ITF members) that second argument matters. Because while values might start the conversation, it’s the commercial impact that gets taken seriously in the rooms where decisions are made. That's what we've seen change things for the businesses we work with, and it's what we want to explore here.

The cost of designing for too few people

Here’s what we notice when we’re in conversations with clients. Often, when talking about inclusive design, there’s a gentle pushback; “yes we would like to do this, but what about the cost?” It’s to be expected. It can seem overwhelming when faced with the possibilities of access audits, website rebuilds, building refits, new equipment, new training, new processes, and so on. 

So instead of pushing how to make something more inclusive, we've started asking something different: who aren't you designing for right now and what is that actually costing you? It's a subtle reframe, but the effect is remarkable. The conversation stops being about what to add to the budget and starts being about what the current blind spot is already taking away. The move from "what should we invest?" to "what are we losing?" is when people really start to pay attention. Let us illustrate exactly what we mean.

Imagine a traveller who has spent months planning a trip, researching destinations, saving up, building excitement. They know where they want to go, they have the money to spend, and they're ready to commit. But when they try to book, the platform won't load properly with their screen reader. The hotel's accessibility information, when they eventually find it, amounts to a single line at the bottom of the amenities page. The tour operator they're interested in has no information at all about what the experience would actually look like for someone with their needs. So they end up moving on and spending their money elsewhere.

Another common situation is when the experience on arrival doesn’t match what was promised beforehand. The “step-free access” includes an unexpected flight of stairs, the accessible room isn’t usable without assistance, or the adjustments they requested simply haven’t been passed on. At that point, the booking isn’t just a poor experience - it’s lost trust, lost repeat business, and a negative review that leads to the loss of future customers. 

For millions of travellers with additional needs, this kind of friction is a routine part of trying to engage with the travel industry, and it represents a commercial failure that is both significant and largely invisible to the businesses creating it. The disability travel market in the UK alone is estimated at over £17 billion, and the majority of it remains underserved. Not because disabled people aren't travelling, but because many products and experiences were designed without them properly in mind. 

And this is just one segment. Consider the ageing traveller market - one of the fastest-growing and highest-spending demographics in tourism - largely ignored by brands still optimising their communications for a 30-year-old adventurer. Or the Muslim travel market, a large and growing segment with clear preferences and significant spending power. The demand is there, the budget is there, but the experience still requires extra effort, uncertainty and compromise, which means lost bookings for the businesses that don’t get it right. 

When you design only for a narrow customer profile, you don’t just exclude people for ethical reasons, you also quietly exclude bookings, spend and repeat customers that already exist.

There's also a compounding effect worth naming. When you design for people you hadn't previously considered, you tend to improve clarity, usability and trust in ways that benefit everyone, not just the groups you originally had in mind. It even has a name: the curb cut effect. Curb cuts were designed for wheelchair users; they're now used by parents with pushchairs, cyclists, and delivery workers without a second thought. Captions were created for deaf viewers; today millions of people use them to watch video on their phones in public spaces. 

In travel, the same logic applies. A booking flow rebuilt to work for someone using a screen reader is just a cleaner, more logical booking flow. Halal food information added for Muslim travellers is more useful food information for every guest. Itinerary details written to genuinely answer the questions of a traveller with complex access needs are simply more honest itinerary details - the kind that build trust with anyone reading them. Better information, smoother journeys and clearer expectations are commercial improvements, not niche ones.

What this looks like in practice

The good news is this doesn’t require a full organisational overhaul. In most travel businesses we see, the shift starts small and specific.

For marketing teams, it might mean looking honestly at who appears in your campaigns and whether the people you’re trying to reach can actually see themselves in them.

For product and operations teams, it might mean walking through your booking journey and asking where it breaks for someone using a screen reader, someone whose first language isn’t English, or someone travelling with access needs who just wants a clear answer about what their experience will actually be.

For leadership, it’s about where inclusion sits in decision-making. If it only appears in CSR reporting or isolated initiatives, it won’t meaningfully shape the product. The businesses making progress are the ones where these questions show up in commercial planning as standard, not as an add-on.

In most cases, these changes don’t just improve inclusion, they remove friction from the buying process itself; better information, clearer journeys, and fewer assumptions.

You don’t need a fully formed plan before you start. What matters more is bringing better questions into the conversations that are already happening about who you’re designing for, who you’re missing, and what that means commercially.

These are the kinds of conversations we’re creating space for within our community. If you’d like to explore this further, join our event ‘Building Inclusive Destinations for the Future’ on 24 June 2026 at the Saint Lucia High Commission in London. It’s an afternoon with senior travel industry professionals focused on practical, honest discussion about what inclusive destination development looks like in practice. Register here.