Simon Darcy

University of Technology Sydney | UTS · UTS Business School

This book critically examines the planning, management, and operations of the world's premier event for Para sport athletes. Noting a lack of research into how these games are planned and managed, the authors of this contributed volume discuss how the Paralympics are essentially different to the Olympics and what this means for their management. Ma...

Studies have identified constraints with the way that accessible accommodation information is documented and marketed. Yet, no research has investigated the criteria that people with disabilities determine as ‘important’ to selecting accommodation and their preference for presenting this information. This paper presents the results of a survey (n =...

Over the last decade a great deal of work has examined major sport event legacies and event leverage. Much of this work has involved Olympic studies and this paper seeks to add to the body of knowledge surrounding major sport event legacies by examining the largely overlooked area of the Paralympic Games. The Paralympic Games are the second largest...

Framed by a social approach to disability and leisure constraints theory, this paper presents the results of a national study examining the constraints to sport participation for people with disability. Responses were obtained from a multi-platform questionnaire survey capturing data on constraints to participation, dimensions of disability, and le...

Work stress and employee wellbeing have gained heightened attention since the COVID-19 pandemic. Until now, organizations have primarily sought to conceptualize these variables as an individual-level phenomenon; thereby neglecting the potential influence of social dynamics within the workplace. Drawing on conservation of resources and emotional con...

Autoethnography, an essential research approach, interweaves personal experiences with introspective insights from distinct communities. Despite its methodological significance, autoethnography remains inadequately represented in hospitality and tourism research discourse. This paper seeks to challenge this status quo by advocating for social model...

Volunteers are crucial for successful event delivery, from community to mega-events. Mega-sport events (MSE) are sold on their generative potential for social legacies for host communities like volunteering to support future community and tourism activity. With the lens of the temporal extension of the socioecological framework (TESEF), we propose...

Purpose The present paper answers two significant questions: (1) What are the relative consumer and firm-level effects of marketing through metaverse compared to conventional marketing endeavors? (2) What are the current trends in utilizing the metaverse as reported in the recent literature? Design/methodology/approach This study employs a systema...

This phenomenological study unveils the lived experiences of care during travel of carers and the adults with intellectual disabilities they care for. In-depth interviews unveiled the unique nuances and complexities of giving care to those who are otherwise unable to travel independently. Their care experiences were characterised by emotional entan...

In this article, we describe the sources of funding cited, and topics of research associated with that funding, in Australian disability research. We conducted a systematic search for publicly available peer-reviewed papers reporting the findings of Australian disability research studies focused on Australia in the 2018–2020 period. Papers identifi...

This study comparatively examined two disability arts partnership projects’ stakeholder perspectives on inclusive practice and social impact. It did so through an innovative abductive research design to visualise the qualitative findings of a comparative social impact assessment of active citizenship. In this paper we examine the inclusive practice...

Purpose: To systematically review the research relating to views and experiences of people with disability eating out in cafés, restaurants, and other settings; and identify factors that impede or enhance accessibility of eating out experiences, inform future inclusive research, and guide policy development. Materials and methods: This study inv...

Purpose The provision of an accessible and inclusive built environment is both a common regulatory requirement for architects and facilities managers, and a critical issue of equitable access for people with disability. Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is key to ensuring appropriate building accessibility is provided and maintained. Improved Buildin...

People with disabilities (PwD) are a COVID-19 vulnerable group, and globally they are experiencing even higher rates of social exclusion than before the pandemic. Value co-creation is a process whereby firms and their customers work together to develop service offerings and provides a tool for service improvement during disruptions such as health c...

Research indicates that students’ participation in university-based extracurricular activities contributes to their graduate attributes such as leadership, teamwork, communication and resilience. However, it has yet to be determined which types of extracurricular activities are more impactful. This study inquired if participation in competitive spo...

Purpose: This paper relates to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Life Below Water (SDG 14) and the need to consider Better Health and Well-Being (SDG 3) in interventions designed to reduce plastic straw waste. The aim of this paper is to explore the competing demands of saving the world’s oceans and sea life from plastic straw waste, and simul...

Innovation research in construction has almost exclusively focused on economic and technological innovation. In contrast, the emerging concept of social innovation has been largely ignored. This is despite the global growth of social procurement policies which incentivize construction firms to innovate in providing employment opportunities for equi...

Climate clocks are currently ticking down to a point in time when it will be impossible to arrest the rate of CO2 emissions within the bounds of the parameters set by the Paris Climate Agreement. The tourism academy has been at the forefront of efforts to draw attention to the climate threat and to develop adaptation and mitigation responses in con...

We are delighted to put forward this Employment White Paper Submission and thus contribute to the consultation process catalysed by the National Jobs and Skills Summit on 1st and 2nd September 2022. This submission is compiled by academic experts in visitor and hospitality economy employment that are affiliated with the peak Australian scholarly bo...

This chapter critically explores the airport and airline travel experiences of those people with mobility disability. Apart from drawing on contemporary research, one of the authors is a person with a high level spinal cord injury and his lived experience is incorporated within the chapter together with photos from a 40 year travel history. The iss...

Mega-sport event legacy research methodologically is dominated by what should be considered single case studies often omitting the importance of the socially situated nature of events and tourism. The extant research has often been conducted during, or soon after, an event though purporting to be about legacies. Thus, they are more about impacts th...

This study challenges the claim that in a university, a discourse of containment is predominant in the relationships that exist around students with disability and their requests for accommodations. It explores the work knowledges of those involved with the implementation of the processes of granting learning accommodations: the disability services...

An important measure of the success of a tertiary education programme is the attributes that graduates possess at the completion of their studies. Universities have sought to address this issue by developing formal curriculum and programmes such as internships and work-integrated learning. However, little is known about how university-based extracu...

Mega-sport events (MSE) are frequently cited for their developmental and legacy potentials for host communities, including tourism, sport participation and volunteering. MSE volunteer research has demonstrated the potential to develop volunteers who may contribute to the host community’s social and human capitals. However, little research considers...

In this paper we examine a community development approach to including people with disability in a sport context within beach precincts for a project called Beach for All Abilities. The aim of this research is to investigate innovative and transformative solutions that enable inclusion. The research design used multiple methods and data sources acr...

For more than 75 years tourism academia has evolved from humble beginnings in catering and hospitality degrees to become an institutionalised and global knowledge creation sector. Over the last 18 months, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has had the effect of amplifying concerns amongst some in government and industry over the role of tourism academi...

The literature on digitalization and accessibility changes to public transport in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is limited. This paper reports on the urban public transport measures against COVID-19 launched by a Spanish transportation operator, TMB (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona), to ensure safe journeys where digitalization of service...

The study of people with disability who become entrepreneurs has been a neglected field of research but with a developing body of knowledge from different countries around the world over the last two decades. This paper aims to contribute to that body of knowledge through examining the journeys of entrepreneurs with disability (EwD) in Australia. I...

Purpose Dysphagia (swallowing difficulty) impacts physical health, quality of life, and mealtime enjoyment. Staff who provide mealtime assistance to people with dysphagia require adequate training to help ensure that the mealtimes are safe and enjoyable. This systematic review examined literature relating to training in dysphagia (e.g., recognizing...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to synthesise existing literature on sports stadia, spectators with disabilities (SwD) and accessibility to identify themes and to highlight the gaps in the literature. This review subsequently develops two propositions that will enable research in this emerging area to further develop. Design/methodology/approach...

The report details social ecology of support for entrepreneurs with disability at the organisational and macro policy levels in Australia.

Purpose Classification schemes make things happen. The Australian Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which derives its classification system from the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), legislates for adjustments to support the inclusion of people with disability. This study explor...

This paper aims to explore ways in which adults with intellectual disabilities experience tourism. The study applies phenomenology and draws on in-depth interviews with participants with intellectual disabilities focusing on their lived experiences of tourism. The tourism experience was significant and meaningful to the participants, in that touris...

Background: For people with disability to live a good life it is essential that funded research in health and social care addresses their interests, meets their needs and fills gaps in our understanding of the impact services, systems and policies may have on them. Decisions about research funding should be based on a clear understanding of the re...

BACKGROUND For people with disabilities to live a good life, it is essential that funded research in health and social care addresses their interests, meets their needs, and fills gaps in our understanding of the impact that services, systems, and policies may have on them. Decisions about research funding should be based on an understanding of the...

Conclusion authored by Simon Darcy & Dimitrios Buhalis This publication addresses the relative lack of research carried out into the topic of accessibility in nature areas to date. Through multiple cases studies and examples of best practices drawn from UNWTO Affiliate Members and other organizations, it illustrates different ways of designing and...

This chapter aims to discuss disability, aging, and accessibility and their relationship with technology trends, taking into account a world full of different kind of constraints, taking Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Sydney (Australia) as study cases. Moreover, the authors also study how a hypothetically smart and accessible city could set the basis...

Sport participation legacies are often offered as reasons to host mega-sport events, yet there is little evidence to demonstrate the claim’s legitimacy, thus we examine “What did Whistler Adaptive Sport (WAS) do to leverage the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to facilitate a sport tourism legacy?”. Through a prospective longitudi...

This study explores customer-to-customer (C2C) social co-creation practices in tourism when customers with and without disability share a heritage service environment. Despite a growing prevalence of heritage- and disability-related research in the tourism literature, few scholars have examined the phenomena from the emergent customer-dominant logi...

The dominant socioecological framework (SEF) is informed by Bronfenbrenner's first‐generation SEF and ignoring the more nuanced later versions that highlight the interconnections and temporal realities of sport and physical activity interventions in the real‐world. To explore how SEFs have been used in sport medicine, injury prevention, and sport p...

Submission to the Parliament of Victoria for their Inquiry into Environmental Infrastructure for Growing Populations

This article explores the constraints to mainstream sports participation of children with disability in community sports clubs and schools through their lived experiences and the perceptions of parents, teachers, coaches, and club officials. It does so by administering an open-ended survey instrument to a sample of participants recruited from schoo...

National parks are important places for our community; they are places to connect with nature, culture and heritage, spaces to connect with family and friends, and environments that contribute to our health and wellbeing. For an increasingly urbanised and technology-dependent society, being able to access natural areas is central for peoples’ physi...

This paper examines the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service efforts to improve disability accessibility in protected areas. Background information is presented on the accessible tourism market and requirements for a whole journey approach to participation for the group. After a general discussion about the strategies for improving a...

Various initiatives have been undertaken in recent years to improve the accessibility of tourism in a large number of countries. One of the areas in which work has been done has been the inclusion and accessibility of information for all, especially for people with disabilities and other users with access needs. A focus of this work has been to the...

This research note seeks to draw attention to the potential impact of social media climate change debates on the Australian tourism industry during and after the devastating 2019–2020 Australian bushfires. Whilst acknowledging the tremendous role of all media forms in the emergency management response, the present paper argues that the growing prev...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the development of disability and tourism to the conceptualising and defining of accessible tourism. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a limited review of the literature as its main approach. Findings In reviewing the development of the field from disability and tourism to accessible tourism, it became...

Purpose This study aims to explore the legacy potential of the FIFA Women’s World Cup (FWWC) 2015, for the host communities across Canada. Design/methodology/approach The mixed-methods study included a link to an online anonymous survey being sent to all volunteers at the FWWC that explored their prior volunteering experience, motivations for volu...

Sport event studies have demonstrated that relevant stakeholders must share objectives and coordinate efforts to leverage a large-scale sport event to secure positive legacies. However, the challenging and complex task of collaboration between networks of diverse organizational stakeholders to secure legacies has received little scholarly attention...

This paper seeks to construct an exploratory nationally comparative tourism accessibility measure (TAI) through developing an objective set of metrics in the spirit and intent of the international treaties and missions regarding the rights of persons with disabilities. Applied to Australia and New Zealand (Oceania) and Argentina and Brazil (South-A...

Since its emergence in 2008, there has been a growing interest in the meaning of Airbnb to various stakeholders. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper examines the representation of Airbnb in the local newspapers of Sydney communities with the largest share of Airbnb listings. Analysis of these texts revealed a strong message concerning the...

All forms of arts participation are likely to lead to positive outcomes, but the nature and reach of these outcomes will differ. While arts programs have increasingly found favour in disability communities, these have historically been oriented towards therapeutic outcomes. They have not been taken seriously, in terms of artistic outputs, the deepe...

This paper presents the key messages from a keynote address I delivered to the 2017 Australia and New Zealand Association of Leisure Studies conference held in Hobart Tasmania, December 2017. In this paper, I reflect on the heuristic learnings from the role of research in addressing critical social issues in leisure and ‘cultural life’. I do so by...

This paper uses as its base a key initiative involving a not-for-profit organisation (NPO), government start-up funding and a social enterprise which evolved through three phases. The purpose of the initiative was the development of a smart phone technology platform for people with disability. The paper’s purpose is to answer questions about the wa...

This paper examines the potential contribution of academics working in the sustainable tourism arena from a relational, practice-based leadership perspective. It argues that these leadership perspectives require a shift in thinking from narrowly defined, instrumental measures of academic impact imposed by performance management and the somewhat her...

Many of the world’s iconic ecotourism attractions reside in heterogeneous rural localities (or places). Over time the nature of these settings evolve, which can lead to tourism and other industry sectors (e.g. forestry, mining, agriculture etc.) at different times coming to hold positions of legitimacy in the eyes of local people. Local people will...

This paper discusses the application of the Pacific Asia Travel Association’s (PATA) risk and recovery strategy for Nepal following the April/May 2015 earthquake and aftershocks. The impact of the earthquake on tourism to Nepal, the establishment and evolution of PATA’s Nepal Rapid Recovery Taskforce and strategic approaches to tourism recovery con...

Increasing market opportunities have been identified for accessible tourism as a result of improved quality of life. Disabled tourists tend to be loyal, spend more and enjoy longer stays in their destinations, although their behaviour obviously differs from one country to another. This situation is strongly influenced by the welfare policies that d...

s This paper proposes a four-tiered hierarchy to understand better the nature and effects of barriers, constraints and obstacles to travel faced by people with disabilities. Previous studies tended to aggregate barriers into a single group and further, some research associated barriers faced by all tourists as being unique to people with disabiliti...

This paper has a twofold focus: to establish a method of assessing the potential social impact of arts and disability projects and to apply this method to ten such projects. It does so by using a newly developed ‘ripple’ model that conceptualises social impact in terms of the development of active citizenship on the part of all participants over ti...

Despite the extraordinary growth of the Paralympic Games since its inception, the movement is constrained by a series of inherent weaknesses. This chapter examines those structural issues that contribute towards these weaknesses through examining the management information systems of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and analysing these...

The growing body of literature on “accessible tourism” lacks a critical scholarly debate around its specific language use and nomenclatures. To fill this gap, this paper provides a first examination of language. Language provides a unique capability to resist, strengthen and reframe identities of individuals and groups, yet can also reinforce, weak...

There remains a lack of discussion in tourism scholarship around inclusive research that puts the travellers’ voice and lived experiences at the forefront of concern. This research note addresses some key ethical and methodological considerations for inclusive research in tourism.