Welcome everyone, lose no one: The business case for inclusion training
Inclusion, says Accessible Accommodation Founder Kerry Williams, means widening the lens to include all marginalised communities.
Inclusion isn’t a slogan. It’s the small, everyday decisions your team makes.
The welcome at check-in, the tone on the phone, and the calm competence when something unexpected pops up.
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For accommodation operators, the case for inclusion training is both human and commercial. Tourism Research Australia research cited by ATDW shows travellers with accessibility requirements accounted for 70.5 million trips and $29.2 billion in visitor spend in the last year, around 22 percent of all trips in Australia. That’s not a niche; it’s a core market you’re already hosting. Yet many guest frustrations aren’t about ramps or room dimensions: they’re about moments:
- A staff member who panics when a guest discloses an assistance animal and asks about where it can go.
- A reservation agent who can’t describe an accessible room clearly.
- A well-meaning team member who makes assumptions, uses clumsy language, or speaks to a companion instead of the guest with a disability, assuming they are non-verbal.
From real quest experiences:
“The reservations lady said, ‘We only have normal rooms available.’ It stung. I am normal, I just need an accessible room.”
“Why do staff always think they need to talk loudly to me? I am blind, but I can hear just fine.”
“I used accessible parking, but staff questioned why I needed it. MS means some days I can walk, other days I cannot. Having to explain myself was humiliating.”
Training turns “I’m not sure what to do” into confident, consistent service. For your team, that means practical skills such as asking the right questions, offering options (not opinions), and problem-solving quickly without making the guest feel like the problem.
It also means widening the lens beyond disability. Inclusion includes marginalised communities such as LGBTIQ+ travellers, where safety and belonging can shape choices—from booking to breakfast. Welcome With Pride positions training as the first step to credible inclusion, requiring hosts to build staff capability in inclusive language and understanding LGBTIQ+ experiences (so it’s not “pink washing”).
Related AccomNews story: Welcome With Pride: Making inclusion the standard in tourism
Crucially, demand from operators has made one thing clear: businesses want true, practical training written for real-world accommodation settings—not generic content.
In response, Welcome With Pride and Accessible Accommodation launched an online accessibility and LGBTIQ+ inclusion training program, written specifically for accommodation operators and designed to translate inclusion into everyday service behaviours across reservations, front office, housekeeping, and management.
The program draws on real-world feedback from their audiences and translates it into on-the-floor behaviours—so inclusion isn’t theoretical; it’s operational. If you need a measurable reason to act, tourism-specific learning data is hard to ignore. That program notes that 21.4 percent of Australians live with disability (and 19 percent of the New Zealand population) and reports that 88 percent of LGBTIQ+ travellers and 75 percent of disability travellers say staff training is essential.
Related AccomNews story: Accessible room that feels like a holiday, not a hospital stay
ATEC’s Accessible and Inclusive Host program is a three-module pathway designed to upskill operators to welcome guests from all backgrounds and abilities. Regional and state tourism organisations are also blunt about the priority: “staff training” sits at the top of accessible tourism toolkits—alongside clear communication and digital accessibility, such as Tourism North-East’s toolkits.
If you’re deciding where to start, aim for five outcomes: fewer service failures, faster problem-solving, clearer pre-arrival information, consistent welcomes across all staff encounters, and a stronger reputation with high-value segments that reward genuine inclusion with loyalty.
Inclusion training protects your brand, boosts revenue, and builds culture and staff confidence. Most importantly, it’s how you make sure every guest experience matches the promise on your website—no matter who walks through the door.
This article first appeared in the Summer edition of AccomNews. Click below to explore.
