Accessible tourism: The case of Alanya "The effect of disabled tourists' perceptions of the destination on satisfaction, revisit and recommendation intention

Disability-free tourism is a type of tourism that is developing and is being studied more and more in the tourism literature. Barrier-free tourism/disabled tourism includes accommodation activities of disabled individuals and their travels to see different places. Individuals with disabilities encounter access barriers during their travels, accommodation establishments, museums and archaeological sites, etc. during their visits to attraction centres. It is necessary to ensure that disabled people actively participate in tourism activities as in all areas of life and have equal rights with other healthy individuals. In order for them to use this right and participate in tourism activities at the desired level, the difficulties they may encounter should be eliminated. In this context, the first thing to be done is to determine these difficulties and to provide barrier-free tourism opportunities. The aim of the research we have planned with this rationale is to determine the perception of disabled tourists, customer satisfaction and intention to visit again and determinants from the perspective of disabled tourists visiting Alanya destination. The population of the research consists of disabled tourists staying in 4 and 5 star hotels visiting Alanya district. Since the number of disabled tourists visiting Alanya could not be reached, the sample of the research was determined as 384, which has the feature of representing 1.000.000 people at 95% confidence level. The research data were collected with 4 forms; personal information form, disabled tourist perception scale", customer satisfaction scale and intention to visit and recommend again scale. The data were collected between 01.01.2023-31.08.2023 by face-to-face and drop-and- collect method. Descriptive statistics and student t test, ANOVA test, correlation and multiple regression statistical analysis methods were used in the evaluation of the data. Of the participants, 56.2% were male and 35.1% were between the ages of 60-69 (age distribution X±SS; min-max 20-74). 61,8% of the participants came from Turkey and 14,1% from England. The nationality of the participants is 70,5% from Turkey and 14,12% from England. The distribution of perception of disabled tourists is 3,305±0,715 (min-max 1-5), the distribution of customer satisfaction is 3,735±0,948 (min-max 1-5) and the distribution revisiting and recommending is 3,865±1,161 (min- max 1-5). In the study, it was found that customer satisfaction was negatively affected by educational status, smoking and positively affected by the perception of disabled tourists (p<0.05).It was determined that revisiting and recommending were negatively affected by education level, employment status, smoking and positively affected by the perception of disabled tourists (p<0.05). In the study, it was also determined that there was a strong positive relationship between revisiting and recommending, customer satisfaction and perception of disabled tourists. As a result, an important result of the study is that as the perceptions of disabled tourists increase positively, customer satisfaction and intention to visit again increase. The other important result of the study is that socioeconomic level is determinative, and those with better socioeconomic level have worse customer satisfaction and intention to revisit and recommend than others. Based on these results, feedback should be collected to continuously improve holiday experiences by communicating with disabled tourists and special packages or discounts should be offered to accommodate disabled tourist groups. Keywords: Accessible Tourism, Disability, Satisfaction, Revisit, Recommend