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Journals / Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Research (AHTR) / 2026 / Volume: 14 Issue: 2

A Scale Development Study on the Expectation of a Disabled Friendly Hotel in the Context of Accessible Tourism

Ayşe Himmetoğlu(AKDENIZ UNIVERSITY)0000-0002-2132-9898
Beril Erkaya(AKDENIZ UNIVERSITY)0000-0001-5728-8330
Zeki Akıncı(AKDENIZ UNIVERSITY)0000-0001-8643-3429
Gülseren Yurcu(AKDENİZ ÜNİVERSİTESİ)0000-0002-6735-0430
Edina Ajanovic(AKDENIZ UNIVERSITY)0000-0002-1718-2862
Gürkan Aybek(AKDENIZ UNIVERSITY)0000-0002-5536-5440
Didem Kutlu(AKDENIZ UNIVERSITY)0000-0003-3354-5202
Pages
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Publication Date
2026-06-08
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AI Summary & Key Takeaways

AI Insight
⚡ TL;DR(Too Long; Didn't Read)

The results provide practical implications for hotel managers and policymakers aiming to improve accessibility in tourism services, and offer a psychometrically sound tool for future academic and applied research.

📌 3 Key Takeaways

🎯
Objective & Hypothesis:Accessible tourism, which involves travel activities for people with disabilities, has become an increasingly important niche market for the hotel industry.
📊
Key Findings & Data:A sequential exploratory mixed methods design was employed, beginning with semi-structured interviews conducted with disabled individuals to generate scale items, followed by a quantitative survey administered to 386 participants.
💡
Conclusion & Impact:The results provide practical implications for hotel managers and policymakers aiming to improve accessibility in tourism services, and offer a psychometrically sound tool for future academic and applied research.
🔬Design:Survey & Empirical Study
📍Scope:Comprehensive Sample
⚙️Variables:disability · accessibility · people with disabilities

Abstract

Accessible tourism, which involves travel activities for people with disabilities, has become an increasingly important niche market for the hotel industry. This study aims to develop a valid and reliable measurement scale to assess the expectations of individuals with disabilities regarding hotel accommodations in the context of accessible tourism. A sequential exploratory mixed methods design was employed, beginning with semi-structured interviews conducted with disabled individuals to generate scale items, followed by a quantitative survey administered to 386 participants. Data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and SmartPLS 4. The scale development process involved exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, resulting in a final scale of 28 items across four dimensions: structural and legal expectations, communicative and interactional expectations, economic expectations, and psycho-social expectations. This study is among the first to develop and validate a hotel expectation scale specifically for individuals with disabilities in the Turkish context using an exploratory sequential mixed-method design. The results provide practical implications for hotel managers and policymakers aiming to improve accessibility in tourism services, and offer a psychometrically sound tool for future academic and applied research.

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Cite This Article

Himmetoğlu, A., Erkaya, B., Akıncı, Z., Yurcu, G., Ajanovic, E., Aybek, G., Kutlu, D. (2026). A Scale Development Study on the Expectation of a Disabled Friendly Hotel in the Context of Accessible Tourism. Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Research (AHTR), Volume: 14 Issue: 2. https://doi.org/10.30519/ahtr.1646799

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