The Guide Service of Washington, D.C., provides guides who board buses coming to our nation's capital.

Included in its

training program is instruction for serving disabled clients.

A third example of tour operators with services for the handicapped is Mobility Tours, a division of All State Tours of Brooklyn, New York. It has been operating since 1975 and provides a custom travel service for local organizations or community facilities for the mentally retarded, physically disabled, blind, and deaf. The tours vary from a day to a week long, to destinations in the Northeast, Canada, Florida, and New York State.

An interesting aspect of the Mobility Tour experience is its purchase of its own mini-motorcoach with a hydraulic lift to help wheelchair-bound passengers board the bus. The coach, which costs $48,000, will carry 20 passengers or, with the seats removed, about 8 tied-down wheelchairs. This is a concrete example of NTA's view that tour operators can promote travel for the physically mobile disabled and, if the market proves viable, can choose to expand to the wheelchair-bound. It is a misconception to

envision the handicapped as persons confined to wheelchairs, because they number only one-half million of the 35 million handicapped Americans. What travel and tourism service suppliers seem to have overlooked in the past in their marketing schemes are handicapped travelers who are not wheelchair-bound. Tour

operators can and do meet the needs of the physically mobile travel groups without investing in expensive equipment or making major changes in programs.

NTA believes that the economics of this potentially huge handicapped market is sufficient inducement for the tourism industry to improve and expand its services to the handicapped. Extrapolating from current demographic information, it is estimated that if only 20 percent of the handicapped would travel away from home for a minimum of five days, at least an additional $6 billion would be generated annually. Since U. S. Travel Data Center statistics show that one new job is generated for every $37,750 spent on travel and tourism, these dollars would generate 158,940 new jobs and assist in stimulating and strengthening the economy. These statistics present a growing potential for handicapped travelers. Unfortunately, we do not know precisely how

many of our handicapped citizens are traveling.

We

The federal government has been involved in many aspects of assisting the handicapped. This includes programs in education, employment, architectural barrier removal, and accessibility. have not come before your Subcommittee today to argue for a new federal program for travel for the handicapped. We seek no new funding programs, nor the inevitable federal regulations, reporting requirements, and paperwork that necessarily accompany federal

appropriations.

It is NTA's philosophy that a cooperative effort between the federal government and the private sector can address many of the problems our society and our nation face. In order to foster more travel community/federal government cooperation in the area of travel for the handicapped, NTA would like to advance several recommendations for possible federal involvement in the domain of existing funding programs for the handicapped.

The first recommendation that NTA would like to make is an identification of the handicapped and the problems they encounter while traveling. In order to solve or minimize these problems, the travel and tourism community needs information and statistics on the handicapped. Depending on the definition employed, from 11 to 15 percent of our population is considered to be handicapped. Each government agency dealing with the handicapped has a different definition of the handicapped. The data developed by one agency under one set of definitions is not always usable by other groups working under a different definition. NTA recommends, therefore, that the federal government's current data collection be coordinated among the different agencies administering programs for the handicapped and that the federal government expand its work in the identification and categorization of the handicapped population's make-up and travel problems. The availability of reliable data would assist the travel community in planning its services for the handicapped, as well as the federal government in

the execution of its existing federal programs for the handi

capped.

Secondly, there is a lack of accurate, up-to-date, information on travel services and facilities for the handicapped and a lack of a central information dissemination point. While many

travel and tourism services are presently available and accessible to the handicapped, a data base of accessibility information to be used for making travel plans for the handicapped has never been developed. In response to this problem, NTA recommends federal government involvement in the preparation and compilation of information on travel opportunities for the handicapped.

A third problem lies in the existence of attitude, rather than architectural, barriers. Travel and tourism service providers and other tourists do not always understand the needs of the handicapped traveler or the fact that, aside from his disability, the handicapped person is traveling for exactly the same reasons as other travelers. The solution response lies in education programs, education materials, and repeated contact with the disabled. NTA's annual convention in Houston last month included seminars and panel discussions on travel for the handicapped to help NTA members learn about marketing services for the handicapped and exploring ways of improving facilities. At the federal level, the agencies involved can join with the private sector in a

public awareness campaign. By assisting in the organization of an educational drive of this nature and by lending its weight to the program, the federal government can contribute to the dissolution of attitude barriers that limit the handicapped traveler.

A fourth area of response lies in the need to know what organizations, public and private, and what services are already in place to assist the handicapped. This information would enable the travel and tourism service providers to work with the existing network in accommodating the handicapped. The travel and tourism industry is by its nature a fragmented grouping of service providers. The industry does not have a centrum to coordinate and disseminate information on government and private opportunities available for the handicapped and those who seek to serve them. NTA believes that the federal government is best suited to pull this information together through either USTTA or one of the existing agencies that administer handicapped programs.

These four suggestions will go a long way in identifying our nation's handicapped, their strengths and needs, and the federal programs already in place. In order to bring federal involvement in travel down to a concrete benefit level for the handicapped, however, NTA would like to advocate a fifth solution response. NTA is convinced that there are many federal programs that could be expanded to include travel as an allowable expenditure of a