The Perks of a Travel Advisor
I met Kristy, of Incredible Memories Travel, on Instagram a few years back. She plans trips for families with disabilities, and makes sure all of the details are covered.
In my early stages of travel planning as a family with disabilities, I could never have entrusted the task to someone else. There are so many details that there’s a fear of something being missed. That perspective changes when you know you’re working with someone who sees the world like you do.
I haven’t worked with Kristy, yet; but, as a community of disability parents, we often have similar questions, so I thought I’d put them into an interview and get them answered! Brace yourself: I learned some things that will blow your mind.
All right, I’m interviewing Kristy with Incredible Memories to learn about what you do and how it’s useful for families like mine that are traveling with mobility needs or disabilities. My first question for you actually was how you got into this, because I’ve not heard of many people who focus on disability travel. So I would love to hear about how you became a travel agent and how that warped into disability travel, or how did that process look for you.
So I became a Travel Advisor about nine years ago. I started because my husband’s in the military, and we have had a lot of deployments. On this one particular deployment, I had a friend who worked for Disney, who helped us coordinate a surprise homecoming. And it was the most magical experience ever. The kids got called on the stage at the Indiana Jones Show, my husband came out, they full-body tackled him to the ground. Little Timothy just danced all the way around not having a clue what was going on. It was hilarious. Disney could do nothing to promote what they did for us. They couldn’t share it, they couldn’t do any marketing, we did not sign a single thing, or release anything to them because Timothy was a foster child at the time, and we needed to keep him out of any deliberate media presence. So for me, it was just this huge thing that was out of the goodness of their heart. And I wanted to create that for other families. And then the longer we had Timothy, the more significant we realized his disabilities are he has profound fetal alcohol syndrome from his birth mom. He’s cognitively and intellectually disabled because of it.
This made me dive more into that side of travel, with learning about accessibility for neurodivergencies. As the years went by, my own mobility kept getting worse and worse and worse, to the point that now four years ago, I became a full time wheelchair user… so it became very important that I learned everything I could about wheelchair accessibility...
And then I went on my first trip as a wheelchair user. I found a lot of things that I did not know, and a lot of questions that I didn’t even think to ask. And I began to realize, the travel industry has no idea how to accommodate somebody with a disability, especially wheelchair accessibility. And we don’t know the right questions. We don’t know how to do any of this, and we have to do better. So that’s where we really put in the work and develop the spectrum of accessibility was trained to everybody. And we began really studying different disabilities so that we would be able to fully engage with people and be able to accommodate to their needs and not our idea of their needs.
That actually leads me into my next question anyhow. Because there are so many pieces to disability travel and you don’t always know what to look for and it’s overwhelming. What is it that you do for your travelers when you’re helping them to plan a trip that takes away from that?
We do pretty much everything. We will book flights, unless you prefer to book your own flights, but we’ll guide you through and will tell you what you need to do, like TSA cares will help you make your seating accommodations for the flight, and tell you how to get your wheelchair taken care of if you are a wheelchair user, including what to say and how to say it to get a manual wheelchair on the plane in the cabin instead of in cargo because if you didn’t know this, that is your right for the air carriers Access Act, if it can safely fit in the cabin.
If you didn’t know this, that is your right (to keep your wheelchair in the airplane cabin) for the air carriers Access Act, if it can safely fit in the cabin.
Kristy Durso
There’s an aisle chair, we make sure that you know about that and how to ask for it, make sure you ask for it at least 10 minutes before you really really desperately need it. So we make sure that’s all set up for you. And then once you’re in your destination, we arrange for transportation, we make sure that you’ve got the right hotel room. And then we set up any tours and activities that fit your disability.
What if there’s anything that I want to do by myself, like I have this separate activity, or I’m visiting grandma, while I’m on this trip? Can I build that into my trip?
Absolutely. Where it’s not like you’re giving us total control. And you don’t have any say. It’s a constant conversation: you’re telling us what you’re interested in, and we’re telling you what’s there. But, let’s say that there’s something that you want to do that is not traditionally accessible, like going in a helicopter, what we will do is call every helicopter place in your destination until we find the one that’s willing to work with us and figure out how to get you on that helicopter. So, now it’s that you’ve got so much flexibility and opportunity, it really ends up coming down to what is it that you want? Not what do you feel like you’re able to do? But what do you want to do? And let’s figure out a way to make that happen.
And I love that you say that because I think most parents wouldn’t even think to ask for what they want to do. So maybe that is a mental shift that we need to make before we go on working with someone who can plan a trip like this, to really put all of your dreams out there and see what you’re able to make happen instead of what we typically do, which is the hours of research to see what is available. And maybe we can’t find all the things that we can do.
If you’re not finding something accessible, it may not be because it’s not there. It may be because you don’t know the right people to ask and you don’t know the right questions to ask. I do. That’s why I do this. So I can make it easier. For all these families. That’s the whole point of a person like me, it’s not to take away your control or anything else. It’s to give you the freedom to feel like you can dream.
This is the first thing that I’m asked when I tell my friends that there’s someone who can plan their trips for them. How much does it cost?
I don’t charge a fee. We do not charge any additional fees. The only time that ever happens is when we’re working with somebody who specialized in Europe, where they don’t have a Travel Advisor portal and we’re paying them directly, then we might need to charge a small fee to cover our time. But we really don’t add fees. Most trips with Disney World, or anything like that, the cost of a travel advisor is already built in there. You’re already paying for one whether you use us or not. If you don’t use us that company then gets to pocket the extra money. They’re not going to give you any special service or anything else because you didn’t use us. They’re just going to say, “Thank you, we’ll keep that!” If you do use us, we get a commission based on your trip, after you traveled, directly from the company that we booked with. They like it when their customers use travel advisors, because we tend to provide happier clients. Because we’ve done our vetting. We’ve explained what to expect at the destination, we’ve done all the legwork, so that when you travel, you tend to be much happier than somebody who didn’t use a travel advisor.
Since you have so much experience with different destinations, do you have some favorite destinations that you would recommend that are really disability friendly and would make planning less overwhelming?
Oh, absolutely. If you are adventurous and willing to go abroad, two destinations that leap to my mind for being super accessible would be Portugal and Costa Rica. Portugal has a company there that does such amazing work with accessibility. It’s like a dream. They started not as a travel company, but as a company that provided care through two houses, one for people with cognitive and developmental disabilities, and the other house for people with mobility disabilities. That’s where they started, then they eventually branched out into travel. And so their expertise really is with people with disabilities, but they have a deep passion for sharing their culture and their country. So they do accessibility very well. So Portugal, I can easily send any traveler to no matter what disability I don’t even need to know your disability to know that I can send you to Portugal.
The other one that I think of is Costa Rica, it’s a little closer to home, and you don’t have to cross an ocean. They’ve just really upped their game with looking at accessibility and travel. They’ve done a beautiful job for multiple kinds of disabilities. So it tends to be a very, very accessible destination that I can easily recommend.
Portugal, Costa Rica, and southern California are some of the world’s most accessible destinations. Which one of these surprises you most?
Southern California tends to be pretty accessible anywhere. Honestly, theme parks do a great job overall, they miss details, because pretty much everybody misses some details. But they get a lot of the important things right. So I could easily send any traveler to Orlando, Florida or I could send any traveler to Los Angeles, we could do those destinations very easily. Other fun, accessible destinations. If you’re looking for something more quiet: Mesa, Arizona has the first autism certification in the United States. They’ve worked very hard on their wheelchair accessibility with help from Wheel the World. They are intentional on accessibility. So I love Mesa. San Antonio, where I live, they actually say, “We’re inclusion City USA.” There’s a big disability population with military wounded warriors… We have an adult sized changing table there, as well as an accessible toilet, for every festival, which makes that really, really fun. And then also even in our airport, we have a full size adult changing table in each terminal. So, San Antonio is an excellent destination for families with disabilities. And don’t forget Morgan’s Wonderland, the first 100% accessible theme park. It’s accessible for autism and wheelchairs in every attraction of that park (not dietary, but they’re working on that). They have both the regular Park and their waterpark and it is an amazing place and they do all kinds of events there throughout the year.
Here is the importance of connecting with someone like Kristy, because literally in our lifetime, there have only been two places that we’ve been told we could not go with a wheelchair because they’re so inaccessible, and they are Portugal and Costa Rica. So, when you say those as the most accessible places to go, I think it’s just like it’s a different set of eyes looking at Different things and looking for different things. So you have found a different way to travel those places than what my friends who have visited there have done. And so it’s not giving up on that adventure because we have a wheelchair user in the family, it’s doing the adventure a different way. Anything else that you think we should add?
I am not the only travel advisor out there who specializes in accessibility, there are several good ones. But I do want to throw caution out there. If you decide to work with a travel advisor, make sure you work with one who does specialize in accessibility and understands your disability. If you are wheelchair user, or you have a child who’s a wheelchair user, and you talk to a travel agent, and you say you need a wheelchair accessible vacation and they say okay, and that’s the last question they ask you, you need to find another travel advisor! They need to have a list of questions they’re asking you of things they need to know. Do you have a bed height preference? Do you need an accessible vehicle? Are you able to transfer? If all they’re doing is booking you an accessible room and leaving it at that, they’re not a travel advisor who understands accessible needs, and you need to move on and find one that does.