India slow in its journey to accessible tourism – Lifestyle News

When Gurugram resident Neha Arora (41) was growing up, family holidays were not a given. Her mother uses a wheelchair, her father is blind, has hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease. As a young professional, she assumed money was the barrier. “I thought once I started earning, I could save and take my parents travelling,” she recalled. “But I realised it wasn’t money that was stopping us, it was the lack of accessibility, facilities, infrastructure for the disabled and elderly plus societal stigma around disabled people travelling.”

From half-finished ramps at heritage sites to hotels with token ‘accessible rooms’, India’s travel industry has long overlooked travellers with disabilities and seniors. With the country’s elderly population projected to surge 41% by 2031, the absence of barrier-free tourism is no longer a niche issue but a growing economic and social blind spot. As we observe World Tourism Day, hailing the industry and rise of tourism, this is a section that is clearly overlooked.

World Health Organization pegs global disability at 15%

The gap is vast. The World Health Organization estimates that 15% of the global population lives with some form of disability. India’s official figure is just 2.1% of the population, a number widely regarded as a severe undercount. At the same time, the country’s elderly population is rising sharply: by 2031, 194 million Indians will be over the age of 60, up 41% from 2021.

Against this backdrop, Arora founded Planet Abled in 2016, offering barrier-free travel for people with disabilities and seniors. The company designs itineraries from rafting on the Ganges to guided safaris in Africa and cultural tours in Japan or Europe. But more than the logistics, it aims to mainstream accessibility in the industry itself. “We design holiday experiences and we also do business travel, conferences and travel logistics,” she told FE. “We use this experience to build the capacity and competency of other travel companies, hotels and destinations so that they also become accessible by design.” For her, the long-term goal is to create competition among stakeholders, driving both affordability and quality of service.

Despite tourism’s rapid recovery — India welcomed 99.5 lakh foreign visitors in 2024, close to pre-pandemic levels, while more than 3 crore Indians travelled abroad — accessibility remains inconsistent. The sector contributed Rs 15.73 lakh crore, or 5.22% of GDP, in 2023–24 and supported over 84 million jobs, yet infrastructure still falls short.

“When people ask me how many accessible hotels or tourist spots exist in India, I always ask: accessible for whom?” said Arora. “A place could be miraculously accessible for a wheelchair user but completely inaccessible for a blind person. Singapore, for example, is often praised for being wheelchair-friendly but is horribly inaccessible for other disabilities. Accessibility is always relative.”

She noted that “most hotels with so-called accessible rooms are four-star or above, and even then, they usually have just one or two rooms. Many are built to tick compliance boxes rather than be truly functional. The question is not how many exist, but how usable they really are.” This lack of reliable information compounds the problem and for travellers, it means every trip carries a degree of risk and uncertainty.

Travel companies offering facilities for the disabled are few, and mostly small. Like Delhi-based Special Holidays Travel which offers wheelchair-accessible tours of Rajasthan and Delhi.

The big fish are slow to wake up to this segment, but a start is being made. Online platform EaseMyTrip has recently added accessibility filters and curated a Jaipur package. “We are witnessing a steady rise in demand for wheelchair assistance among senior citizens,” said co-founder Rikant Pittie. “On long-haul flights, nearly a third of travellers now request such support. Accessibility has moved beyond being niche, it’s becoming a mainstream expectation.”

Others too are signalling intent. At Thomas Cook India, president Rajeev Kale argued there is also a commercial imperative. “Accessible tourism remains largely unexplored. By addressing the needs of such travellers, India has the opportunity to unlock immense economic potential while promoting inclusivity. Inclusive tourism is the very future of travel.”

At SOTC Travel, SD Nandakumar, president of holidays, said: “While India is still at an early stage, we are encouraged to see growing awareness among families travelling with senior members or those with mobility needs. Accessibility is no longer viewed as an exception but an integral part of modern travel expectations. It will be an essential part of shaping the future of travel.”

UK firm offers accessible India tours

International operators are also stepping in. Enable Holidays, a UK-based company, runs accessible tours of India’s Golden Triangle – Delhi, Jaipur and Agra — offering adapted safaris. Feedback has been positive. Helen Dolphin, a traveller who joined one such trip, said: “Visiting somewhere like India may seem a bit of a step into the unknown but I cannot recommend it enough. The people could not have been friendlier or more helpful, and there might not have been ramps, but wherever I wanted to go, there was someone ready to help.”

Yet fragility persists. Royal Indian Voyages, once a pioneer in heritage tourism for disabled travellers, shut down during the pandemic, highlighting the vulnerability of ventures that lack systemic support.

Other countries offer clear models. Sweden’s Act on Accessibility obliges public facilities to remove barriers. Germany and Canada embed universal design into urban planning, transport and buildings. Japan has integrated tactile technology and robotics across stations and airports. In Australia, major cities have fitted public transport with ramps, auditory signals and tactile paths.

Private operators have also flourished. In Spain, Disabled Accessible Travel has grown from Barcelona to much of Europe, and launched accessaloo, a crowdsourced app for accessible toilets. In the US and Europe, companies such as Sage Traveling conduct on-the-ground audits of hotels and attractions to guarantee accurate information.

US-based platform Wheel the World has built accessibility into its core offering, with more than 5,000 verified hotels, activities and tours. Its teams measure and validate accessibility details to remove guesswork. One traveller, describing a holiday in Spain, said: “They handled all of our details, including transportation, hotel, and tours. They got exactly the room that was best for my husband and made sure we were taken care of throughout the whole process.”

Airports are also setting benchmarks. Tokyo Haneda, Seoul Incheon, Singapore Changi and Istanbul are considered among the world’s most accessible. In India, Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport became the first to achieve Level 2 accreditation under Airports Council International’s accessibility programme, offering sensory rooms for neurodivergent passengers and sunflower lanyards for hidden disabilities.

Accessible tourism is shifting from niche to necessity. With India’s ageing demographics and rising incomes, the case for barrier-free design is becoming urgent. For now, progress depends on individual operators and advocacy, rather than systemic reform.

As Arora puts it: “People don’t want sympathy trips. They want the same choices as everyone else, to see the world, to taste freedom. That is what travel is supposed to be.”

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