By Denis Sheehan, Publisher, H&C News
Accessibility in hospitality is usually considered one business at a time.
Is the hotel accessible? Does the restaurant accommodate different requirements? Can someone use the attraction? Is suitable transport available?
Orlando presents a different way of looking at the same question.
Accessibility is increasingly evident across the destination: in hotels, theme parks, attractions, transport, visitor planning, restaurants, arts and recreational experiences.
The significance is not simply that Orlando has accessible businesses. Many destinations do.
What is more interesting is the extent to which accessibility is becoming part of how Orlando presents, connects and enables the destination as a whole.
Orlando cannot claim that every barrier has disappeared, and no credible destination could. Accessibility is too broad, individual and continually evolving for that.
What Orlando can demonstrate is sustained activity across many of the different organisations and services that collectively create a visitor experience. In doing so, it is providing leadership that other travel and hospitality destinations would do well to examine.
Visit Orlando’s dedicated accessibility guide is a good place to start.
Rather than concentrating solely on accommodation, it brings together information covering theme parks, hotels and resorts, restaurants, transport, arts and entertainment, recreation, medical and mobility services and trip planning. Visit Orlando also offers complimentary vacation planning, with its planners sensory certified by KultureCity and available to help visitors plan around individual requirements.
The destination welcomed a record 76.7 million visitors in 2025, an increase of 1.8% on 2024. The UK accounted for 933,500 visitors, making it Orlando’s second-largest international market after Canada. Visit Orlando itself represents more than 1,600 companies across Central Florida’s tourism economy.
Across Orlando’s major theme parks, visitors can find detailed information before they arrive about accessibility, mobility, sensory requirements and individual attractions.
Walt Disney World Resort provides accessibility planning information and sensory guides, alongside accessible transportation throughout much of the resort.
Universal Orlando Resort provides accessibility information covering its parks, queues, rides and transport.
SeaWorld Orlando and LEGOLAND Florida Resort similarly provide resources intended to help guests understand what they can expect before visiting.
For many travellers, accessibility starts before a booking is made. Knowing whether an experience is likely to work can be as important as the facilities encountered on arrival.
Visit Orlando highlights hotels providing accessible bedrooms, roll-in showers, pool lifts and other mobility-related facilities alongside properties offering sensory resources and quiet spaces. Its current accessibility resources also point visitors towards wheelchair-accessible transport including airport shuttles, public buses, resort transport and rail services. Explore Visit Orlando’s wider accessibility resources
Arts and entertainment are part of the picture too.
Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts has maintained Certified Autism Center status, requiring at least 80% of its public-facing staff to undertake relevant training. Its wider accessibility provision has included American Sign Language interpretation, assisted listening devices, captioning and sensory-friendly provision.
Accessibility advocate and wheelchair user Amanda Perla has worked with Visit Orlando to explore accessible experiences across Central Florida, including Gatorland’s adaptive Gator Gauntlet zip line, where a seated sling system enables participation by some people with limited mobility.
Viewed separately, these can look like individual accessibility initiatives.
Viewed together, something more substantial starts to emerge.
The destination is increasingly giving visitors the ability to consider accessibility across a journey rather than discovering each element independently.
Orlando’s work has also attracted external recognition. Travel + Leisure reported Orlando as the most wheelchair-accessible city in the United States in 2024, while a separate Forbes Health assessment placed Orlando among the country’s most accessible major cities, considering measures including accessible attractions, restaurants, buildings and transport-related factors. Different methodologies inevitably produce different results, but both underline the extent to which Orlando’s accessibility is becoming visible beyond its own destination marketing.
There is also a compelling commercial case for the hospitality industry to pay attention.
The 2024 Open Doors Organization study, conducted by The Harris Poll, estimated that 25.6 million American travellers with disabilities had taken 76.9 million trips during the preceding two years and spent almost $50 billion on their own travel.
Its hospitality research found that 93% of respondents ate out during their trips. Around 20 million adults with disabilities had stayed in a hotel or motel during the period studied, yet 74% of those hotel guests reported encountering some form of barrier.
Those numbers expose both an established market and an opportunity still not being fully realised.
If people can establish before travelling that a destination is more likely to meet their requirements, plan their visit with greater certainty, find appropriate accommodation, move around more easily and participate in more of what the destination offers, accessibility starts influencing the attractiveness of the destination itself.
That changes the business conversation.
A hotel can invest significantly in accessibility, but its guest still needs to reach the hotel.
They may want to eat elsewhere.
They may visit attractions.
They may attend a performance.
They may require transport, mobility equipment or other support.
The value created by one accessible hospitality business can therefore be strengthened by the accessibility of the businesses and services surrounding it.
The reverse is equally true.
A barrier elsewhere in the journey can undermine accessibility investments already made.
For anyone looking for signals and patterns in changing hospitality and travel expectations, what is happening in Orlando is worth watching.
Not because every part of its approach will translate directly to another destination, nor because Orlando has reached some imaginary accessibility finishing line.
It is worth watching because it demonstrates what can happen when accessibility becomes visible across a destination rather than remaining the responsibility of individual businesses acting in isolation.
For decades, destinations have competed through their hotels, restaurants, attractions, culture, entertainment, climate and connectivity.
Accessibility can increasingly become part of that competitive proposition too.
Different organisations in Orlando are addressing different barriers in different ways. Some concentrate on physical access. Others provide sensory information, staff training, transportation, pre-arrival planning or specialist services.
What connects them is the visitor.
And the visitor does not experience Orlando, London, Edinburgh, Malta or any other destination as a series of unrelated businesses.
They experience one journey.
That may be the most important lesson Orlando is providing.
The question for hospitality is no longer only whether an individual hotel, restaurant or attraction is accessible.
Destinations increasingly need to consider something bigger: How accessible is the experience we collectively offer?
Orlando deserves congratulations for placing that question increasingly close to the centre of its visitor proposition.
Its approach shows ambition, considerable investment and, importantly, an understanding that accessibility extends far beyond compliance.
Other destinations can learn from that leadership.
Because if accessibility becomes part of why a visitor chooses one destination over another, it has moved beyond being an operational consideration.
It has become cohesive destination strategy.
Related Reading: Christopher Moore appointed Ambassador to Accessible Hospitality Alliance.
