I nearly jumped for joy — well, I would’ve if I could’ve — when I saw a new TV commercial for the Expedia travel company the other day.
It shows a woman who’s obviously had enough of winter’s cold, ice, and snow. She is desperate to escape to warmer climes — and needs to take her wheelchair with her.
Been there, done that? I have, but I’d never seen an internet travel company reach out to people with mobility problems, like those of us who have multiple sclerosis. The 30-second commercial gave me hope that a major travel company might actually understand our needs.
Expedia has partnered in this effort with Wheel the World, a company I’d never heard of before the ad. It specializes in accessible travel, and with this partnership, Expedia provides its users access to a database of hotel rooms that can be searched according to accessibility needs and preferences. Sure, the commercial was a business decision, but it seems that tapping into this special needs market is good business.
Expedia isn’t the first company to do this. Several years ago, I wrote a post about some humorous ads for Maltesers candy that featured people with disabilities. Although the links from my post to those ads have expired, I found one elsewhere. It’ll probably give you a chuckle.
Guinness had a commercial that focused on wheelchair basketball.
While these were great, when was the last time you saw a similar ad featuring someone with a disability?
The exception, not the rule
Except for someone in a wheelchair scooting by in the background, TV ads showing someone with a disability are rare. In 2021, the TV ratings company Nielsen reviewed nearly 450,000 prime-time broadcast and cable TV ads. Just 1% showed disability-related themes, visuals, or topics. Yet according to the World Health Organization, 1.3 billion people in the world live with a significant disability. The Nielsen report calls excluding disabled people from ads a “missed opportunity” and says that failing to “incorporate people with disabilities into everyday brand messaging could be costly.”
I agree. Expedia obviously gets it. Not only has it included us in its ad, it’s also making the service it sells more useful to us. I continue to travel, both domestically and internationally, and sometimes with my entire family, even though I use an electric scooter. The next time I book a trip, I’m going to check out Expedia and Wheel the World.
I wonder why more companies don’t make this type of effort to reach into our 1.3 billion wallets. Don’t you wonder, too?
A version of this post first appeared on the MS News Today website.
