IMPROVING THE ACCESSIBILITY OF TOURISM THROUGH AN INNOVATIVE EVALUATION TOOL FOR TOURISTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS.

In the last years, improving accessibility in tourism and hospitality became one of the central preoccupations of the European Commission. Several studies were funded by the European Commission in order to offer a deeper understanding of what accessible tourism means. Also, several research projects were supported to create accessible tourism itineraries. In 2014, the European Excellence Awards for Accessible Tourism rewarded the true commitment to accessibility of several European enterprises and public authorities. Making European tourism more accessible is also directly correlated with making it more competitive. In this context, the present article advances the idea of creating an innovative tool, based on a friendly technology, offering the possibility to destination management organizations to obtain direct information regarding the accessibility of the tourism and hospitality facilities and services within destinations. We used the literature review, the case study and the innovation, as qualitative research methods. The first part of the article is an overview of the importance of accessibility for the European tourism. In the second part of this paper, we presented the central role of improving accessibility within the most recent European Tourism Indicator System ETIS Toolkit for sustainable destination management which was launched in March 2016. In this context, a brief presentation of the research project called Destination Intelligent Management for Sustainable Tourism (DIMAST) was included due to the fact that it was conceived mainly based on the first European Tourism Indicator System Toolkit for Sustainable Destinations, launched in 2013. We advanced the idea of improving the Business Intelligence tool created within this project by conceiving an innovative technology to obtain direct information from tourists with special needs from Brasov County. Such approach can support the efforts of the local destination management organization to improve the accessibility of tourism, hence making it more sustainable and competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]