The horror stories related by business travellers with disabilities continue. At an Advantage Travel Partnership and Business Travel Association conference in London in March 2025, politician, broadcaster and former Paralympian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson related how her wheelchair was lost on one journey. It was found, eventually: in Dublin, three months later. Then, it was returned to her ¨C sawn in half.

Damage to mobility equipment in transit, surely a mishap that airlines and airports have no excuse for failing to fix, is a startlingly regular peril for travellers with accessibility needs. It is named as one of the transport challenges that more than 80 per cent of respondents with disabilities faced during their most recent trip in a survey by MMGY Intelligence in partnership with the European Network for Accessible Tourism and the World Travel & Tourism Council. The report covered travellers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

Other challenges revealed in the survey included long waits for assistance and lack of staff training. When it came to accommodation, problems included hotels not disclosing critical information such as step-free access points, nor confirming that an accessible room had been booked.

Grey-Thompson told her audience she has had ¡°loads of experiences where I¡¯m made to feel like a second-class citizen.¡± But amid this gloom there are chinks of light.

One example is the accessibility assistance report published in June by UK regulator the Civil Aviation Authority. While attention focused on three airports that require improvement ¨C London Heathrow, Edinburgh and Prestwick ¨C more encouraging news was that for the second year running no UK airports were labelled as poor. In addition, five airports previously categorised as needing improvement were now deemed good or even very good.

Perhaps an even more encouraging disclosure was that 1.9 per cent of total passengers at UK airports in 2024 requested assistance, up from 1.69 per cent 2023 and 0.94 per cent in 2010. That may reflect an ageing and less fit population but, more positively, it suggests people with accessibility needs are travelling more frequently.

Regulatory attention to ending discrimination against travellers with additional needs is increasing. In July, the UK government welcomed a report it had sponsored by an Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group, led by Grey-Thompson. Its 19 recommendations include training of all aviation staff by disabled people, access to complaints, and clearer information, including on requesting and booking assistance and how mobility aids will be transported.

Meanwhile, the European Accessibility Act came into effect across the European Union on 28 June 2025. The Act harmonises member state laws for ensuring access to information, whether through websites or self-service terminals, including ATMs, ticketing machines and check-in machines.

Companies now need to conform with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the accepted EU standard, so that, for example, information is presented orally as well as visually, and flashing content is avoided for people who suffer from epilepsy. According to law firm Bird & Bird, the rules apply to ¡°e-commerce services which cover the online sale of any product or service, including booking flights, rental cars, excursions, events and accommodation.¡±

Application of the EAA within corporate travel is complicated by an exemption for products and service sold exclusively to other businesses but, says event technology company Cvent, ¡°if the product serves both B2B and consumer customers, or includes consumer-facing functionality, then the EAA accessibility requirements would apply.¡±

Cvent has created templates to help clients customise the company¡¯s tools in line with the Act. Moving beyond technology, Cvent has also produced a guide entitled The Big Book of Event Accessibility covering a wide range of measures that meetings buyers and planners can deploy to help the estimated 25 per cent of event attendees that might need particular accommodations, such as those with mobility challenges and the neurodivergent community.

Examples include venue and travel vendor sourcing, venue layout, budgeting, assistance with registration and use of audio-visual. ¡°Events that aren¡¯t designed with attendees with disabilities in mind exclude a large part of your audience, erode your ROI, and can create compliance issues,¡± the guide states.

There is also plenty that travel managers can do to improve accessibility. The UK and Ireland¡¯s Institute of Travel Management set out a blueprint for achieving that goal in June with a publication entitled Building an Inclusive Travel Programme. Endorsed by the Business Disability Forum, the guide divides its recommendations into three categories: policy, people and process.

A webinar staged by ITM¡¯s Inclusive Travel Taskforce to launch the guide covered all these topics and did not shy away from the accompanying complexities and sensitivities which have to be confronted. These include an inherent tension between making policy exceptions for those whose needs require adjustments but not forcing employees to justify their request for an exception.

In the spirit axiomatic to inclusivity of ¡°never about us without us¡±, a travel manager and sustainability lead for a bank explained how they created a questionnaire to engage employees on how they could be helped. ¡°When setting up the survey, I ran it past legal and HR to ensure we weren¡¯t asking any untoward questions,¡± they said on the webinar. ¡°Don¡¯t ask for specifics on people¡¯s situations. They can volunteer it if they want to, but we don¡¯t ask for it.¡±

Kayleigh Rogers, inclusive travel lead for Amex GBT Consulting, said there are so many adjustments that travellers may need that ¡°you will never be able to list all those things in a travel policy. I recommend a link to a document or intranet page to offer examples of ways you can support.¡±

The elephant in the room is companies fearing that additional arrangements or policy exceptions without question could force up their costs. But the taskforce rejected such an inference as far too simplistic. Asked whether travel managers can expect a rush of travellers demanding first-class travel, a diversity, equity and inclusion manager ¨C someone who has specific requirements when travelling ¨C said: ¡°It¡¯s not first class travel I need. What I need is use of a lounge, extra legroom and an aisle seat.¡±

Travel managers may also fear the amount of time introducing an accessible travel strategy could demand of them. ITM has addressed both these concerns by including a cost-versus-effort matrix in its guide. Several easy wins in the matrix are well inside the lower left quadrant. ¡°We felt it was really important to put this together,¡± said Rogers. ¡°There¡¯s a lot you can do to make your travel programme more inclusive without having to spend much money, if at all.¡±

But perhaps the most effective improvement travel managers can achieve is using their collective voice to push suppliers and service providers to do better. AtkinsR¨¦alis travel procurement manager Adam Hickingbotham related how it took him far longer than anticipated to add a customised gold logo to his company¡¯s online booking tool ¨C some two years. The logo denoted hotels with rooms that colleagues had verified as accessible.

¡°When you look at the standard black [accessibility] logo, how do we know if it¡¯s [genuinely] accessible?¡± Hickingbotham asked. ¡°They say it¡¯s accessible but when we visited we found the beds weren¡¯t the right height and there wasn¡¯t enough space in the bathroom. No one is taking it seriously. It¡¯s quite disturbing really.

¡°Why are we having to create a programme to signpost our colleagues to hotels that fit their needs when hotels are telling everybody it¡¯s an accessible room? The more people that complain the better, because at the moment there¡¯s not that many of us.¡±