Travel for Disabled Customers project

Travel for Disabled Customers Project Officer, The Co-operative Travel

Brief description of project:

Identify the offerings for disabled customers and their families by The Co-operative Travel and make recommendations to expand into this market.

Aims of the project:

To research and understand the travel market for disabled people and people with restricted mobility.  To then execute a structured PR and marketing strategy that will enable us to capitalize on this market.

The major output of this project are:

• Focus Group to understand needs of disabled customers
• Recommendations to expand Travel offering
• Materials and promotional opportunities to support and publicise Travel offerings to disabled customers

How this project contributes to the strategy of the department and business:

Externally, 11m people are now covered by the scope of Disability Discrimination Act in this country, 2.64m are claiming incapacity benefit and 1m of those are out of work and are ready to enter employment.    Very shortly the UK will be in the position where just 20% of the working age population will be white, male, not disabled and under the age of 45 so there are very clear business reasons why we need to make the Group attractive as a retailer to as wide a population as possible.  With our particular values and principles, there are also social and moral reasons why The Co-operative should be a leading practitioner.