CWT's recently launched Specialty Assistance service for travelers with disabilities is the first step in enhancing the TMC's capability in ensuring special needs are met for a wide spectrum of travelers, CWT director of service design Stephanie Lewis said.
The service was born as CWT (No. 5 on Travel Weekly's Power List) had started to see more diversity, equity and inclusion-focused demand from clients in requests for proposals, she said, with accessibility the "hot topic at that point." About a year of work ensued, with gathering data and identifying service gaps and pitfalls to address what could build off services CWT already offered.
"We have always supported travelers with disabilities," Lewis said. "We just haven't had a really formalized program around it."
One of the main focuses of the program is booking, as the "inconsistencies are pretty vast" among suppliers' accessibility offerings, she said. As such, one of the first steps was building an internal data repository of preferred suppliers and creating a live access point at the point of sale for travel counselors to access that information.
"Suppliers offer different services and call them different things," Lewis said. "You have to translate that into a booking experience, making it as quick and easy as any booking process."
The booking process also has a "safety network" built in to ensure that travelers can trust that the needs they booked are met. Within a day or two of travel, counselors check in with suppliers to make sure everything has been booked properly and needs will be met.
CWT also enhanced its global profile tool to capture better specific traveler needs such as wheelchairs, service animals and seats for caretakers.
"We wanted to avoid travelers having to repeatedly tell travel counselors what their needs are," Lewis said. "As needs occur and change, travelers can manage those requirements, and our counselor base routinely uses that throughout the process."
In addition, the program has a "feedback loop," not only so CWT can continue to improve its own services but also to gather information on suppliers and ensure that they are meeting needs as advertised, she said.
Training for the service has included educating counselors in avoiding ableist language, she said. Building on research both with third-party consultants and with CWT's own counselors who have disabilities, the TMC has developed an hour-long training module for employees. That is built on by workshops both with leaders and with group discussions, where counselors who work in the program can share their own experiences and help build best practices, she said.
The initial phase is largely focused on travelers with physical disabilities, which is the biggest demand at the moment, but the idea is for it to be an "evolving solution," Lewis said. As it focuses on addressing needs as opposed to disability -- two people with the same disability might have different specific needs in travel, after all -- it could easily expand to address specific needs of women or LGBTQ+ travelers, for example.
"The solution was always built with scale in mind," Lewis said. "The training can be adapted, and the format can be used as we start to bring in different travel demographics."
Source: Business Travel News