Accessible Sustainable Tourism And The Universal Design Index

GC001D-14SUS: Accessible Sustainable Tourism And The Universal Design Index

Introduction

Malaysia aspires to become a high-income country by 2020, to tap the growth potential Malaysia launched Economic Transformation Programme (ETP). Tourism has been identified as one of the National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) to propel this transformation.

Kuala Lumpur is one of the highly visited cities within Southeast Asia. The tourism industry is wide ranging in its services and facilities where it will provide employment across many sectors of the population. In achieving its status of a metropolitan city, KL is challenged not only to provide ‘tourism for all’ to suit the intergenerational society. Accessible tourism is in demand as many more people travel and they come from all walks of life; gender, age groups, economic background, etc. This study provides a critical analysis of accessible tourism facilities and how it can be an instrument to further boost incomes from tourism in KL.

Impact

1. Universal Design Index for all the tourism products
2. Policy on accessible and sustainable tourism products
3. Interactive Website on Accessible Tourism

Challenges

1. The common dissatisfaction is usually with the public sector for lack of regulations, legislations, control and implementation where there is also dissatisfaction with the private sector for not understanding the needs of accessible tourism facilities and piecemeal solutions.
2. Lack of designing and constructing accessibility for human needs and an imbalance in adopting policies is separating Universal Design (UD) from sustainability.

Benefits

1. People: Tourism for all experience for people with disadvantages, elderly peoples as well as public.
2. Planet: Universal design which is the focus of this research would be beneficial to both environment and people. Sustainability principles embed in this study.
3. Profit: This research programme promotes design optimisation, sustainable use of resources as well as promoting social equity for all group of people.

Principal Investigator

Ati Rosemary Mohd Ariffin (Faculty of Built Environment, UM)
aa_alambina@um.edu.my