New Booking Website Launched at www.accessible.travel

Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Today sees the launch of accessible.travel - a new on-line booking site for people with disabilities and others who need to know about the accessibility of venues and hotels before they travel.

The site is conceived, designed and managed by Craig Grimes, a wheelchair user and determined traveller, adventurer and access consultant to the tourism industry. Grimes, currently based in Nicaragua, has previously developed several websites that provide information for disabled travellers, their friends and families.

With accessible.travel he brings together his experience from the design of web-based services and from his own travels to more than a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.    

The European Network for Accessible Tourism, ENAT has been an advisor to Grimes during the development of the new web service, in particular with regard to access information standards.

The booking engine will allow travellers with disabilities to search handicap-accessible hotels by city, price, and access requirements, then book their rooms directly on-line. Objective access data has been collected with the help of access assessment tools developed by the European Union's OSSATE project and the travel website www.EuropeforAll.com 

Users can also book airport transfers in specially equipped vehicles, mobility equipment, guided tours, and museum passes, among other services.

The site will list in-depth information and hotel descriptions for people with disabilities, and will eventually allow visitors to view virtual maps of hotel bathrooms to make sure the dimensions and specifications meet their needs.

"Accessible for one disabled person is not the same as accessible for another," Grimes says. "I hope that accessible.travel will make travelling a less complicated prospect even before people leave the house, by serving as an on-line community for people to share information and book the services they need in advance. I care about the clients and their needs, because I have the same issues," he says.

Like all travel websites, the success of accessible.travel will depend on how users take to it. In its first phase, accessible.travel will offer booking options for eight cities around the world: Athens, Barcelona, Brussels, Oslo, Paris, Prague, San Francisco, and Melbourne. Once the page starts generating revenue, Grimes hopes to add at least one new city to each month.

Craig Grimes, Founder of accessible.travel