Accessible Australia is a utility platform for all accessible tourism stakeholders, including individuals with disability and their support, government, businesses, and NFP organisations which acts as a centralised resource and community for the accessible tourism industry in Australia. It is designed to facilitate greater participation in tourism by people with disabilities.
It is a social enterprise, and by design, is structurally built to be self-sustaining – helping itself to help others, and therefore not reliant on donations unlike a traditional NFP. Furthermore, as an online platform, Accessible Australia can be scaled easily to improve the lives of disabled people across Australia. Uniquely, the National Disability Strategy 2010-20 by the Commonwealth, states that: “People with a disability represent a sizable potential travel and tourism market that can be tapped through improved customer service, accessible transport, venue and accommodation options.” (pg. 20), outlining federal support for our venture.
Our point of difference is that we’re able to collate and disseminate disability tourism information, on a platform which makes it accessible anywhere. Our model weaves together social impact and economic profitability – a unique offering in the market.
Whilst there are a few grassroots attempts like ‘Australia for All’ and highly localised platforms like Access Sydney, none have the scope, comprehensiveness and functionality to provide a truly centralised and robust solution for either travellers or businesses. There is no one-service out in the market currently which has these functions at scale and has public federal support. Furthermore, having provisioning for a community on the platform, will mean an original, curated user community, which has traditionally been dispersed.
The potential for our solution is widespread, and involves domestic and international travellers. Conservative estimates measure a potential of over $50M of value generated for Australia, assuming a very small 0.625% increase in engagement in the disabled traveller market, domestically only, based on figures from 2003 (the latest). The most conservative estimate from the European Commission in 2013 projected that by simply providing additional limited accessibility features, disability tourism engagement would increase by ~23%.
Accessible Australia so far has achieved some significant milestones in our infancy period including: winning a Changemaker position in the 2016 Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon (where our MVP will be developed), receiving positive feedback and approval from Deloitte Partners and connecting with several key influencers in the industry. This encompasses: Australia for All (to develop our content), Dr Simon Darcy (Australia’s leading researcher in disability tourism), the Disability Advocacy Network Australia, House with no Steps among other key business, political and NFP influencers. These partnerships and others are instrumental in our long-term strategy for growth to enable change and develop traction alongside internal milestones which include finalising our business model and developing our product development versioning.
The Accessible Australia team has or is currently: co-founded a social enterprise which is still running today, founded another company bootstrapped which achieved profitability in 3 months, worked in a high growth technology startup which is still growing, a working technology consultant helping companies drive innovation and disruption within industries and worked with for-profits and NFPs to drive business performance through strategy development, mentoring and coaching. All members are also educated in business management (Masters) which rounds off our entrepreneurial and business acumen.
Sustainability in the context of Accessible Australia comes down to the social impact created by core business activities, and relies on the continuance of the organisation without the reliance on grants and funding. The social enterprise model fits this, tying in together the social impact and overall profitability of the organisation.
Key metrics will demonstrate sustainability in this context including qualitative metrics such as: number of signups and traffic to the platform, the number of partner organisations, decreasing CoA, and active users. Qualitative metrics will be the main source of sustainability and social impact measurement and include outcomes/impacts such as: positive user stories, increased disability tourism and engagement by businesses, greater social awareness, and importantly, increased engagement from disabled tourists themselves. Our organisation has a focus on social and economic sustainability working in tandem; our platform is not only a source of revenues but also the source of our content and hence social impact for our target group.
Accessible Australia shines by giving marginalised disabled people a chance to fully experience the travel dreams and destinations that they want. We leverage technology and scale to achieve a positive impact in people’s lives, whilst ensuring our own economic sustainability and viability through intelligent organisational design and talent.
Winning this competition would enable us to continue to build out our organisation, leveraging the expertise and experience of the mentors from Quantum Compass to help us make more informed decisions about our organisation and its future. The funding would allow us to build out key foundational collateral for the organisation including website hosting and marketing collateral, while the coworking space will allow us a place to hold key partner meetings. Significantly, the mentor connections and press from winning the event will invaluable in developing our branding and reputation.
The planned 12 month roadmap is: continued development of business and functional requirements for our MVP, further development of our landing page, continued development of relationships with key stakeholders, development of key ‘user groups’, data migration and implementing our business development plan among other tasks.