found the number of disabled people

found the number of disabled people in Egypt
to be 951,152, of whom 610,432 weremale and
340,720 female (Al-Ahram Weekly, 2010).
It is important to understand the needs and
desires of people with special needs and the
type of services and products that should
attract this market segment (Germ and
Schleien, 1997; Donoghue, 2003; Yau et al.,
2004). Environmental conditions and the
quality of personnel in hospitality and
tourism are crucial (Ozturk et al., 2008). In
addition, information pertaining to accessible
accommodations, accessible attractions,
and availability of accurate information pertaining
to accessibility are so important and
greatly affect destination choices by special
needs customers (Gladwell and Bedini, 2004).
The aim of the study is to investigate the
ability of the Egyptian hospitality industry
to accommodate special needs customers.
In order to achieve the aim of the study,
the following objectives were addressed:
(1) To assess the suitability of hotels’ products
and services for special needs
customers.
(2) To identify and evaluate hotels’ staff
ability to deal with special needs
customers.
(3) To propose how the Egyptian hospitality
industry could better attract and
serve special needs customers.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
According to the UK Disability Discrimination
Act, a disabled person is someone who “has a
physical or mental impairment that has a substantial
and long-term adverse effect on his/
her ability to carry outnormalday-to-day activities”
(UK Disability Discrimination Act, 1995).
Disability discrimination results from the interaction
between persons with impairments
and attitudinal and environmental barriers
that hinder full and effective participation in
society on an equal basis with others. (United
Nations, 2008).
It is now widely recognized that people
with disabilities along with their carers,
assistants, family, and friends constitute a
large potential consumer market segment
for travel and tourism, which should in turn
generate extra revenue and bed occupancy
percentages (Lach, 1999; Burnett and Baker,
2001; Darcy 2003; Chen, 2004). It is worth
noting that the implementation of access
provisions of the Americans with Disabilities
Act (1990) has increased revenues in the
hotel industry in USA by 12% (Bruns, 1998).
However, the development of this niche
market depends on how the tourism industry
addresses the issues of accessibility to
tourism opportunities (Chen, 2004). Special
needs customers’ selections rely heavily on
past experience, and on accessibility. This
market segment is very loyal to establishments
that attend to their needs, for
example, ramps and disability friendly
rooms, trained employees to serve the disabled
and anticipating the needs of those
attending the disabled (Burnett and Baker,
2001).
From a supply perspective, many owners
and managers do not recognize disability as
a potential market segment and, consequently,
do not promote their facilities and
products in an appropriate manner for the
disabled to make an informed choice about
their accommodation needs. In addition,
accommodation managers report low occupancy
of the accessible rooms and that
non-disabled customers do not like using
accessible rooms (Darcy, 2010).
According to Smith (1987) and McKercher
et al. (2003) persons with a disability face a
number of barriers to participation in
tourism, and they agreed that the main ones
are: intrinsic (lack of knowledge, healthrelated
barriers), environmental (architectural,
transportation, rules or regulations)
and interactive (communication challenges,
attitudes of travel and hospitality industry
workers). A fourth factor added byMcKercher
et al. (2003) is economic (affordability, need