Is Luxury Travel Really Built For Humans?
Luxury prides itself on intuitive service: anticipating what a guest needs before the guest articulates it — or even knows they need it. But there is one area where the industry consistently falls short: accessibility. Too often, we expect travelers who require special arrangements to explain precisely what they need, whether that’s a bed of a certain height, a specialized vehicle, or accommodations for a service animal. That isn’t anticipation; it’s abdication.
The stakes are only getting higher. More and more high-net-worth travelers require some form of additional support, and the industry is doing a subpar job meeting that demand. Roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population — and more than half of retirees — live with some form of disability, John Sage, CEO of Accessible Travel Solutions, recently told me, pointing to a significant overlap between accessible and luxury travel. Add to that the rise of multigenerational trips, as well as travelers dealing with temporary injuries or health issues, and accessibility begins to look less like a niche concern and more like a structural reality.
Yet one of the biggest obstacles isn’t infrastructure, but language. Across the industry, advisors and suppliers tell me, accessibility is often filtered through vague shorthand: “independent,” “active,” “no assistance needed.” These labels may feel reassuring but they rarely hold up in practice. Independent from whom? In what contexts? For how long? When language remains imprecise, the burden of interpretation falls onto advisors, operators, and guides, and ultimately jeopardizes the guest experience.
This is where anticipatory service starts to break down. Most accessibility challenges stem not from a lack of willingness, but from not knowing what to ask — and not asking early enough. The most effective operators front-load conversations with detailed, sometimes uncomfortable questions, long before a guest arrives.
“The real battle is getting information out of people,” says Andrea Grisdale, founder of IC Bellagio, the high-end destination management company specializing in Italy. “Are they requesting assistance at the airport? Do they need a wheelchair? Can they get out of it? Can their companion push it, or do they need a porter? Can they get into a car, or should we send a minibus? Does the wheelchair fold up or not? We just hammer people for information so we can do a better job for them.”
That level of specificity isn’t bureaucratic — it’s protective. Most failures happen before a trip even begins, when assumptions replace questions and preparation gives way to improvisation. But when needs are clearly understood, experiences can be redesigned rather than diminished.
Grisdale recently planned a trip for a blind couple that became an exercise in creative rethinking rather than constraint. Their itinerary emphasized food and wine tastings, included special permission to touch artifacts at Pompeii, and even incorporated a Ferrari test drive — as passengers — to translate speed and sound into sensation. For other clients, her team has identified wheelchair-friendly alpine paths in the Dolomites and museums that offer tactile information panels. The shift isn’t accommodation: It’s imagination.
Still, even when service delivery improves, another paradox remains unresolved — particularly at the high end of the market. Accessibility often comes at the cost of status. “I have a very well-to-do client with a prosthetic leg,” says Linda Munson, president of Royal International Travel, a boutique agency in Michigan. “When he travels with his family, the kids are in suites while he’s in a standard room, because that’s the only accessible option. And he’s the one paying for the trip.”
For Munson, the problem isn’t feasibility, but design thinking. “With today’s designers, there’s no reason an accessible room should feel institutional,” she says. “I don’t know why they haven’t figured out how to make ADA rooms that are just as beautiful as everything else.”
It’s a telling contradiction: guests with the means to book the best are often offered the least desirable inventory. Accessibility is still treated as a compliance requirement to be checked off, rather than an integrated part of luxury design.
Cruises, interestingly, have moved further along than hotels. With centralized ownership, standardized fleets, and fewer legacy constraints, cruise lines have been able to systematize accessibility in ways hotels have not. Some even have dedicated teams tasked with coordinating mobility, boarding, dining, and shore excursions — a level of anticipation that remains uneven across luxury hospitality more broadly.
Hotels, by contrast, remain fragmented by ownership structures, aging buildings, and brand standards that vary widely from property to property. The result isn’t indifference, but inertia. Accessibility, like sustainability before it, struggles to find a consistent set of guidelines. In response, industry groups such as Accessible Travel Solutions are working to define common accessibility criteria that can be assessed and certified — an attempt to move the conversation from good intentions to accountability.
“Sustainability only scaled once senior leaders took responsibility and embedded it across departments,” Glenn Mandziuk, CEO and President of the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, told me. “Accessibliy needs the same level of leadership, rather than being left to individual teams or champions.”
The missed opportunity is clear. Accessibility failures don’t always show up as complaints. More often, they take the form of bookings that never happen, brands avoided, and clients steered elsewhere.
True anticipatory service doesn’t mean guessing what a guest needs. It means asking better questions earlier — and designing experiences flexible enough to meet people where they are. Accessibility simply reveals whether luxury is truly built around human beings, or around assumptions that no longer hold.
What about you? Have you had clients or guests that presented accessibility challenges? Or seen creative solutions? Let’s keep the conversation going!