Accessibility Experiences in Motorhome and Caravan Tourism: Insights From User-Generated Content of Travelers With Mobility Impairments
Diofelo, Manfred (2026)
2026
Master's Programme in Sustainable Societies and Digitalisation
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2026-05-29
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202605296552
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202605296552
Tiivistelmä
Accessible tourism aims to ensure equitable travel participation; however, current physical and digital infrastructures frequently present barriers, particularly within the sector of motorhome and caravan tourism. Standard tourism communication often relies on generalized accessibility claims, creating a disproportionate requirement for independent pre-trip verification. To capture operational realities, this study investigates how travelers with mobility impairments communicate their accessibility experiences in motorhome and caravan tourism through online user-generated content (UGC). Adopting a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the research systematically analyzed a validated dataset of 188 narrative segments extracted from 22 multi-platform UGC sources. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to develop analytical themes, which were subsequently compared against a secondary dataset of formal tourism provider communications.
The findings demonstrate that accessibility is a continuous sequence of physical, environmental, and digital negotiations. The analysis yielded three core themes: accessibility through vehicle design and spatial usability, which highlights the necessity of bespoke adaptations; accessibility through environmental and infrastructure conditions, which establishes that a single physical barrier can disrupt the broader travel chain; and accessibility as planning, information work, and lived negotiation, revealing the extensive independent digital verification required to sustain travel. Furthermore, the cross-dataset comparison confirmed a substantial mismatch between the objective spatial data required by travelers and the information published by mainstream providers.
While the empirical data specifically identifies barriers within mobile tourism, these challenges reflect systemic issues across the broader accessible tourism value chain. Consequently, a central contribution of this study is the provision of explicitly formulated recommendations to improve accessibility in tourism generally, delivering practical, evidence-based guidelines for industry stakeholders to address structural and informational barriers.
The findings demonstrate that accessibility is a continuous sequence of physical, environmental, and digital negotiations. The analysis yielded three core themes: accessibility through vehicle design and spatial usability, which highlights the necessity of bespoke adaptations; accessibility through environmental and infrastructure conditions, which establishes that a single physical barrier can disrupt the broader travel chain; and accessibility as planning, information work, and lived negotiation, revealing the extensive independent digital verification required to sustain travel. Furthermore, the cross-dataset comparison confirmed a substantial mismatch between the objective spatial data required by travelers and the information published by mainstream providers.
While the empirical data specifically identifies barriers within mobile tourism, these challenges reflect systemic issues across the broader accessible tourism value chain. Consequently, a central contribution of this study is the provision of explicitly formulated recommendations to improve accessibility in tourism generally, delivering practical, evidence-based guidelines for industry stakeholders to address structural and informational barriers.