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Despite developments in the fields of technology and health, some people may still have congenital or acquired disabilities. In our world, where one in every seven consumers is disabled, these consumers also have the right to utilize the services offered to them in the best way as the other six. With the developed technology and innovations, it has become easier and more inexpensive for disabled consumers to access products and services. The number of disabled consumers is also increasing day by day in the tourism sector. However, the designs of touristic products are not suitable for every type of disability. The concept in disabled tourism that is known as “Quiet Tourism” in the literature represents the group including consumers with hearing and speech loss. This section aims to present consumers with hearing and speech loss who have to continue their lives this way becoming a new market for accommodation firms and what types of difficulties and opportunities may be encountered. It is aimed to show that the existing infrastructure at accommodation firms is not adequate, but there is a considerable potential.

This research is about the evaluation of organizational risks in the hospitality sector, using the experience of a guest with visual impairments. The objectives of this research are to (1) identify if the previous expectations of a guest with visual impairments trip will be exceeded in the final; (2) classify organizational risks in the hotel sector; (3) verify if there are direct impacts on the travellers' future behaviour, such as destination recommendation and intention to return to the destination. Despite of the fact that organizational risks are composed by transport, hospitality and tourism attractions (tourism players can jeopardize the success of a travel experience), this research will only focus on the hospitality sector. To assure the achievement of the referred objectives, a case study will be used based on the analysis of the experience of a Portuguese guest with disabilities, who traveled alone, around Europe, with a guide dog. His expectations, constraints and risks will be analysed through a deep-depth interview, in which questions are organized from the literature review. Finally, it is expected that this exploratory research helps to find new avenues for the study of organizational risks, more precisely, hospitality risks for disabled people.

Children are not clay tablets upon which adults can etch predetermined futures. Rather, children are active agents who repeatedly interact with various social fields. Religion, one of those fields, is a major social institution that influences one’s religious beliefs as well as one’s secular behavior. Studying children’s views on religion and how they relate to their religious communities makes explicit the ways children actively participate in their own religious socialization. Consequently, this study is an examination of children’s participation in their religious communities at two evangelical Protestant churches in Northern California utilizing focus group interviews of children as a way to get at children’s collaborative constructions of meanings. Consistent with current understandings in the sociology of childhood, findings indicate that children separate themselves from those of adults within their own “kid congregations” that are distinctly separate from the adults. Moreover, this research addresses a gap in the sociological literature regarding how children talk about their relationships to their church communities; it has implications for how one interprets and approaches current and future studies investigating how children relate to their religious communities.

Tourism and servicescape are usually figuring in the literature as mobile and seeing as a template for all guests. However, mass-customized servicescapes tend to restrict moves and acts of some groups of customers. The purpose of this research is to understand why manmade servicescapes may create barriers and how restricted customers behave. The research gap is addressed through the specific case of how visually impaired persons (VIPs) act and move in hospitality servicescapes. The study emphasizes the importance of spatial approach in service research.

By utilizing a qualitative approach the research employed go-along observation, individual and focus group interviews to elaborate more on how this thesis relates to mainstream tourism. The empirical data were collected during three years in Sweden and Kazakhstan. Fifty-six visually impaired and blind travelers were interviewed and/or observed. Research results demonstrate that hospitality servicescapes restrict acts and moves of visually impaired guests. But VIPs resist constraints by developing different tactics to get expected services.

Globally, jurisdictions have made several attempts to eliminate and minimize discrimination in employment. These include moral suasion, social justice arguments, business case arguments, and legislative enactments. Whilst the former has had limited success, the passage of legislation has proved instrumental, not only in containing the perpetration of discrimination based on protected grounds but also in increasing awareness of the disadvantages which result from the disparate treatment meted out to persons as a result of their immutable characteristics. Disabilities are one such grounds. Where legislation exists, it typically prohibits disparate treatment in relation to persons with disabilities in the areas of employment, education, and the provision of goods and services. This chapter analyses a sample of discrimination cases, with claimants who have alleged discrimination based on their diagnosis of autism or a related disorder within the autism spectrum. These cases are within the United Kingdom and have been decided by Employment Tribunals in England. The cases and decisions are held at the office of the Employment Tribunal Service in Suffolk and are accessible via their online repository. The sample of Tribunal cases presented here relate to various employment practices within British workplaces.

Application of technology and meeting accessibility requirements of guests are two essential areas to consider and improve in order to facilitate, ameliorate and accelerate the management of hospitality services furnished by hotels. These two trends carry great importance for competitivity of hotels' services and sustainability of tourism industry. They are two distinguishing characteristics that build a positive perception of hotels' image among its rivals.

This chapter aims to reflect the current level of conformance of the hotels' services to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for tourism, specifically, SDG 11 related to accessibility and SDGs 9, 12 and 13 related to technology. A qualitative research is conducted to find out the commitment and awareness levels of the hotel staff at managerial positions to the accessibility and technology requirements in line with the mentioned SDGs. The representatives of city centre hotels of İzmir, Turkey with three, four and five stars and boutique hotels categories are chosen as the target population. The results obtained via content analysis signal that the extent of conformity of hotels to technology and accessibility requirements in line with the adoption of the related SDGs depend on the creation of practical solutions on the educational, legal and managerial perspectives. The chapter contributes to academic literature in tourism management and brings suggestions for tourism practitioners to adapt and improve their services to meet the standards and requirements of SDGs related to accessibility and adoption of technology in hospitality services.

Purpose and approach – This research explores gender and gender inequality in representation in state legislatures among African Americans, Hispanics, and white Americans. Using 10 states with the largest concentrations of African Americans in the population and 10 with the largest concentrations of Hispanics in 2003, a parity index was used to compare each race/sex group's share of each state's population with that group's share of seats in the state legislature. Parity ratios were also constructed for white women and white men in both sets of states.

Findings – White men dominate all the state legislatures surveyed here; white women are severely underrepresented as are Black women, Hispanic women, and Hispanic men. Black men are slightly but not greatly underrepresented in political office in these states. A consistent pattern is that the higher the representation of any group of males, the greater is the gap between women and men.

For Black and white women in both sets of states, having a high proportion of women who are college graduates, who are employed, and who work as managers or professionals and garner larger earnings increases their chances for election, but this pattern is not observed among Hispanic women.

Implications – These findings are significant because they bring together previously disparate insights from political science and sociology; highlight differences between women and men and among people from different ethnic groups; and reveal the importance of an intersectional approach for understanding the representation of diverse groups in political office.

In the highly competitive professional sports industry, managers of a newly established competition face many challenges, including “converting” or gaining the allegiance of new groups of consumers (fans, spectators) to their colors. One critical aspect in the converting process relates to the “ideal” game-day experience as perceived by would-be consumers. Gaining knowledge about this area could be critical to professional sport marketers in enhancing the perceived quality of sport events. This study examines the ideal football experience among 1,412 fans of an Australian A-League football (soccer) club. The importance of a lively atmosphere, that of high turnouts of spectators and the opportunity to watch quality and attacking football are highlighted in most comments, even relegating the game’s final score (winning) to a more marginal level of importance. Some of the implications of the findings for professional football marketers and avenues for future research are presented and discussed.