Live From Travel Week 2024: Navigating the World as a Traveler with A Disability with Sophie Morgan

Intro: Giving you exclusive access to the minds of industry leaders in this special edition of Brand USA Talks Travel, recorded live in London. Brand USA Travel Week, hosted in U.K. and Europe, brings together key players in the U.S., U.K., and European travel industry to discuss trends, challenges, innovations, and the opportunity to drive future visitation to the United States. Here's your host, Mark Lapidus. 

Mark Lapidus [0:28]: Travel has been called the greatest privilege of our time: the freedom to explore, to wander, to discover. But what happens when that freedom isn't equally accessible to all? Today, we bring you the remarkable story of Sophie Morgan, a British television presenter, disability advocate, and unstoppable adventurer who challenges our perception of what's possible. The next voice you'll hear is Sophie. 

Sophie Morgan [0:55]: Have you ever in your life felt really, truly free? Because I have. And I want to just take you on a bit of a journey with me now. Just close your eyes and picture: you're on a motorbike. You're traveling at about 80 miles an hour. You've got miles and miles and miles of road, and the wind is just hitting you so strong against your chest that you feel that you could just fall off. But below you there's this machine, and it's carrying you, and you are driving, and it is just the most exhilarating feeling you've ever experienced. Well, that's precisely where I found myself at the height of last summer, and I was riding parallel to the most spectacular range of mountains I think I've ever seen in real life. It's the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. 

Audience member [01:47]: Yeah. 

Sophie Morgan [01:49]: Yeah. Unbelievable. Breathtaking. And there was something so special about this moment, you see, because it wasn't just the jagged peaks and the snow-capped summits that were just up in the sky, and the God rays, when the sun comes through the clouds, and it was like something out of a dream, to be honest with you. And the sun was coming down over the valley, and there was this light, and it was just honestly something I had never imagined I would see. 

Everything seemed so vast and so untouchable and so special. And just for a little bit of a moment, it felt like just time was still. It was just me, my bike, and this wild wilderness. And riding beside these mountains, of course, as is so often the case when you're in nature, you get struck by how small you are, how insignificant you feel. But actually, for me, there was this really extraordinary feeling that for the first time, I actually felt the complete opposite of insignificant. I felt completely alive. I felt completely empowered, in fact, more than I probably ever had in my life. Because after miles and miles of road to get where I was, but also after years and years of searching, I felt I was finally on my way to exactly where I wanted to go, and to be exactly the person that I wanted to be. And that is something that is both literally and figuratively a really hard place for someone like me to be in. In fact, it's a place that some people said that I would never find. Because you see, as a disabled traveler, and more specifically as a paraplegic woman, there are countless times when you will be told that the world does not belong to you in the same way that it belongs to other people. 

That freedom is a privilege that belongs to the people by whom and for whom the world was really designed. And so for many of us, travel is like a ride. It's like something we can all do. But for some others, it's something we have to fight for. So there I was, with this extraordinary backdrop of the Grand Tetons. I was feeling the most alive I've ever felt. It was joy, pure joy. But I was deeply struck by this sense of... It was a bittersweet feeling. Because I just realized that that feeling that I had was so inaccessible to so many people, and I felt this sense of guilt. That the barriers that people like me have to face to get access to spaces like that, to get feelings of freedom, of travel and venture, to get to those places, the barriers are so high, whether they're physical or worse still, attitudinal, that so many disabled people don't even try. They don't even try and get out of the front door, because it's just too hard. And in the truest sense of the word, those barriers, they disable us - more than our disabilities themselves. So there are these mountains sitting next to me, and there is this sense in me in this moment that for people who navigate the world differently, there has to be a shift. 

There has to be a change in the way that we think about what we're allowed to access and what we're not allowed to access. So this is what brings me here today: to challenge that perception, really, and to present the concept that travel and adventure and freedom, it should be available to everybody, no matter what your ability, and why I think that the U.S. is where all of these things can be truly achieved and attainable for all. So yes, hi, I'm Sophie Morgan. I'm a TV presenter, I'm a travel writer, I'm I'm a disability advocate, and I'm an artist. I'm probably best known here in the U.K. for presenting the Paralympics on Channel 4, but I also do current affairs documentaries, consumer shows, travel shows. I've done live TV shows such as Loose Women, if anyone's familiar that. And the best job of them all, I present Crufts for Channel 4, which is a dog show, if no one's familiar with it. And my career in TV started at the same time as my life as a disabled woman began. So in 2003, I was 18 years old, and I was just about to leave school and start my adult life. 

And I was so excited about the future, I was just dying to be an adult. I was itching for it. And having just passed my driving test, I was just so close to feeling that adult freedom that you get at that young age. That's just so exhilarating, so exciting. I couldn't wait. But unfortunately, the same night that I collected my A-level results, I was driving home from a party where we've been celebrating, and I lost control of the car that I was driving. And in the crash, my vehicle rolled off the road. I was in this quiet little country lane up in Scotland, and I just lost control. I was a very inexperienced driver. And as the car flipped, my body twisted, and momentarily, at the point where your seat belt just crosses over your chest, if you're driving on the side we do in the U.K. - well, actually, it's the same either way - this point here where your seat belt crosses over your chest, held me still, and in that moment, my vertebrae just went [snap] like this. And that was it, I was instantly paralyzed, so I had a spinal cord injury. Everything that I thought about for my life, everything I wanted to do, all that excitement I thought about was just around the corner for me - lost, gone. 

So I woke up in intensive care three days later, only to find that, unfortunately, in addition to the spinal cord injury, I'd lost the ability to see, and I was struggling to breathe, and my organs were failing, and everything was going in the wrong direction. And they told my parents that I wasn't going to make it, but by some miracle that I did. And once I was past the worst, I went from ICU into the spinal rehabilitation unit, where I was told these fateful words, that "You're never going to walk again." But little did I know, actually, that walking would be the least of my worries, to be honest with you. Because I have what's called complete paralysis, which means that from this level here, where my vertebrae was damaged, down, I've got no movement, and I have no feeling, and my body was and still is unable to give feedback. So I lost the ability to just have the most basic functions, bodily functions, were just lost. The inability to know when I need to go to the toilet, or when something was hot, or something was painful, or anything like that was just taken away. 

Just like that. And the complications were vast. But the one thing that was the most shocking to me was that because of this disability, I was going to be dependent on a wheelchair for the rest of my life. And I have to say, as a young woman with so much energy and passion and motivation in my belly, this fire that I wanted to just explode out into the world, to suddenly be told I was going to not be able to do all these things, it was devastating. But I was determined to find the things that I could still do. And even though my existence just felt so stiflingly small at that point, I was just determined to find that there must be a life out there. There must be opportunity for people like me. Now, this was a while ago, so it's before social media. So I didn't have access to these stories. I couldn't go and find examples of other people doing amazing things. It just didn't happen. We weren't on TV that much. So I rushed through this three months of rehabilitation where I learned everything, really, from how to get into a chair, how to use it, how to dress myself and manage incontinence, and how to wheelie and transfer. 

And I learned how to drive, again, with hand controls. And I just went on a deep dive to learn as much as I possibly could about how to live like this, because I didn't know anyone else who had a spinal cord injury or used a wheelchair, so I was on a learning curve. I felt really great. I felt really excited. But when I rolled out into the world after three months in this bubble in hospital, I was hit by this reality that these barriers were going to be stopping me from just living my life, that I would have to have more resilience and more tenacity than I had any idea that I had. I didn't know what I was going to be able to do. It was absolutely terrifying. So for me, the journey to finding myself again, and adapting to this life successfully, began when I set off on the road to both broadcasting and traveling. And they actually happened to happen at the same time. So a few months after I left hospital, the BBC rang, and they were looking for, and I quote, "Crazy disabled people to go on an adventure." And I was like, "That's me. I want to go." 

So I signed up to this extraordinary adventure where I went with the BBC across Nicaragua on foot - "on foot" - with 11 disabled people. And it was absolutely terrifying, and possibly the most stupid thing I could have ever done. But I was really determined to see if I could still travel and if I could still do this and I could still get into the world, right? I just had this belief, also, that I wanted to prove all the naysayers, and perhaps myself, too, that people like me, we didn't have to be limited; that there were things that we could do, I'm sure of it, right? So I wanted to go on this learning journey and take people with me. So I agreed to partake in it. And unfortunately, I didn't last very long, I got amoebic dysentery week three. Not fun. And I got flown home. But I did have two sort of massive awakenings at that time. One is, yes, travel is possible, and must be achieved. Possibly not to the mosquito coast in a wheelchair. But TV was also going to be an amazing tool for me in shifting people's perceptions in storytelling, and helping people understand that perhaps their ideas of what disability is, and can be, wasn't necessarily correct. 

And that was as much for me as it was for anybody else. Yes, so TV and travel were really two spaces where disabled people weren't really represented. And the paradigm shift that I had to go through to believe that I had the right to both spaces began around that time. So fast forward 20 years, and I'll take you back to the beginning of this road trip. I was coming up to the 20th anniversary of my injury. And at this point, I had been riding what's called a Spider. Now, a Spider, if you're not familiar with it, is a three wheeled bike, right? You see them a lot in the States; you don't see them so much over here. They got two wheels on the front, one wheel on the back, some of you nodding. They're amazing. If you haven't tried them, come to California, I've got a whole load of them. You can come and try them. They are incredible. And I found them because I had always had this dream that one day I'd ride around the world on a motorbike. I don't know where it came from. I'm a big fan of TV shows like The Long Way Round with Ewan McGregor, the big travel shows. 

I've always been a fan, and I've always wanted to ride around the world on a bike, but I can't ride a motorbike, so that wasn't very practical. So I found a Can-Am. Now, I had been riding these Can-ams for about three years. When my anniversary came up, I knew I had to be on the Can-am. I just didn't know where I would have to be on this Can-am. But there is nowhere I feel more free, more myself, more alive than on this machine. So I was researching for ideas of where I could go for my anniversary, and I had read a book about the woman who was the first woman to ever ride around the world on a motorbike. She's an English woman, and she'd set off in the '80s, and it's a fascinating book called The Lone Rider. I suddenly had this epiphany, I was like, "That's it. I'm going to go ride around the world on my motorbike. That's what I'm going to do for my anniversary." But I only had a month off work, so that was not going to happen. So I said, "Right, I'll just do the first leg. I'll go from London to L.A. on my bike. That's what I'll do over a month." 

So that's what I did. Now, should a wheelchair user, or someone with paralysis, come to any of you as travel experts, you might think that was a bit crazy to go and do this huge journey. And I certainly had a lot of people saying, "What? Really? On your own as well? You want to do that?" But the thing was, firstly, that wouldn't be the first time or last time that I would be told I could or couldn't do something. That was always happening to me in my life. But the thing about what I wanted to try and do was, this trip wasn't just about going from point A to point B. The thing about a road trip and an adventure is that it's the ultimate symbol of freedom and possibility. And I was determined to prove that those things were still attainable to people like me. So the trip had a purpose to it. It had more than just a bit of fun, it had a purpose. And if I have learned anything in this life, is if you are chasing a purpose, you really are unstoppable. So lastly, the other reason I wanted to do this trip is because I wanted to do it for her - that 20-year-old kid who was paralyzed, terrified, clueless, absolutely unsure and uncertain as to what she could or couldn't do. 

I wanted to do it for her, and say, "Look, you never thought you'd be doing something like this, did you? Riding around on this massive motorbike." And so that's exactly what I did. And did I know that this trip was going to change the direction of my life? Absolutely not. I mean, I had my suspicion. But of course, if you want to go from London to L.A., you've got to get over the ocean, and I only had a month to do this trip, so I had to cheat somewhat. And so I decided that instead of shipping the bike and all of that, it was going to be too expensive and everything, I was going to fly over to the East Coast. And thanks to some friends at a dealership, I was going to pick up a bike on the East Coast, and I was just going to ride across to L.A. I'll just give you a bit of overview of the trip journey, because it was pretty intense, and it went on for a long time. So we landed in D.C. I have to say, if you ever want to go in D.C. right, get on a bike at night and tour around. 

There's no tourists, there's no one around. You got the city to yourself. You can see everything. It's beautiful. So we landed straight off the plane. And I say "we," it was me and my friend who was helping me carry my bike. I couldn't - no one basically would let me do it on my own. My family wouldn't let me do it. So my mate came and he went in the car and he put my chair in car. So he came with me, and I was on the bike. And we did D.C. by night and then rode out into... We went through Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Not in this order. It was all over the place. But we missioned it straight up to South Dakota, and then took that road west. That long, straight road that goes West, because we wanted to hit Sturgis, because Sturgis was happening with the bikers, which - yeah. So we got on this road and there were bikers everywhere. I was just me, this little chick from this bike, and I honestly felt completely out of place, but it was so much fun. Unfortunately, we got COVID on the way in. So we got to Sturgis, and it was pouring with rain. 

But if anyone's been to Sturgis for the bike rally, it's like something else. It's just extraordinary. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bikers all in one place, and we got there, and we just - it was amazing. Then went over through some of the, we got past the Badlands into some of the Black Hills. Again, if you haven't been, you got to go. Through Mount Rushmore, all of this. And we went up to the north of Yellowstone, down into Yellowstone. I went in the morning, first light, to go wolf-spotting with a wolf tracker, which was just... my god... You're watching the sunrise in Yellowstone. I mean, I'd seen the show, I'm not going to lie. That's one of the reasons I was there. And it just surpassed the show. It was just something I couldn't even put into words. We spent the whole day zooming around there, and then saw the bison and everything. Stayed locally, then drove off and, I'm rushing through, but basically, we went straight across to some skydiving, and then went up to Oregon and then snaked all the way down, obviously, that iconic coastline, all the way down to L.A. So 4,000 miles. 

Hit a couple of terrifying heat domes. I don't know if you guys are familiar with heat domes; I wasn't. Not fun on a bike. 114 degrees at one point. It was just absolutely overwhelming. So if any of you have actually enjoyed this type of travel before - and if you haven't, you must. Road tripping is the best. But you'll know that part of the appeal of this trip is the freedom, right? It's the flexibility. It's the, "I'm going to wake up, I don't know where I'm going to go." You might have an itinerary, you might have a plan, but you can have that like, "I just might stay here tonight," or "I've just met someone interesting. I'm just going to hang out with them for a bit." You want this fluidity, right? Where you want to stop for eating, where you want to stop for drinking, sleeping, bathroom, rest, all of that, the freedom to explore. That is part of the joy. But typically, that freedom of choice is not really afforded to people who have additional needs like me. It's normally actually the barrier. And I had gone to the States expecting that I would have to manage in a way that I've had to manage here in the U.K. 

So what that means is, my choices are not the same as non-disabled people's choices. For non-disabled people and disabled people, our choices look somewhat different. Non-disabled people can choose where they want to stay, for example, by the cost or the location or whether it has air conditioning or a pool or a twin room or whatever. You can choose however you want. Your filters look different to the filters that I have to have, and basically, I have to tick different boxes to you guys. And over the years, as a disabled person, disabled traveler, I've come to find this to be the same with many other things, right? So clothing choices, restaurant choices, housing choices, work choices, where you can work, all of these things. The built environment and society at large is not designed with us in mind, and so we don't have the freedom to choose. And unfortunately, businesses don't really seem to see us of value, okay? Even though we have an estimated population of 1.85 billion, and we are an emerging market larger than the size of China; plus our friends and family add another 3.3 billion potential customers. And we have an estimated, and I'm going to say this out loud, and I'm fact-checking it, 13 trillion in disposable income, which I don't even know how you get your head around that. 

I don't know how they calculated that, but apparently that's true. We have a 13 trillion in estimated disposable income. We're mostly overlooked, right? Actually, they've estimated in the U.K. alone, businesses miss up to about 2 billion a month by not accommodating us. And they get away with it. Because the laws here don't actually go far enough to protect us, okay? So they can hide, these businesses can hide behind the fact that the laws aren't there to tell them to do it. And when I rolled out of hospital all those years ago, when I was first injured and I first had to try and regain my life, the first time I actually learned about the fact that I was going to need to know what these laws were and how they protected me, was I went to college. And the college I had got a place at, because I had had my injury, I had to defer it. And when I went back a year later as a wheelchair user, they said I couldn't go, because it wasn't accessible. And I was like, "What? What do you mean?" I didn't know about this. I didn't know you couldn't do things. 

And so this moment of terror, that I had to learn about my rights, I had to know my rights, and I'd have to know them for the rest of my life, hit me then, and I've had to know it ever since. So what are the rights and what are the laws here? Well, they're pretty pathetic. So basically in the U.K., it says that you have to make "reasonable adjustment." Now, the word "reasonable" is about as vague as it gets, and "reasonable" does not protect us. "Reasonable" can't be enforced. It's so vague and it's so prohibitive. And in fact, what we see here is we see buildings taking precedence over people. I mean, even coming in here today, I can't come in the same entrance as you guys. I have to go back around through the thing and up through the end and round by the bins and in through the food and up a goods lift. Do you know what I mean? I don't have the same access points as you do. And businesses can claim that it's too expensive, it's too impractical to accommodate people like me. I mean, there's nowhere more clear than this than 10 Downing Street. 

I went to 10 Downing Street as part of a campaign that I've been running, because I'm an advocate and fighting for equal rights when it comes to air travel. That's a whole other story. But I went to 10 Downing Street with a bunch of other advocates who are wheelchair users. We couldn't get in the front door. And what does that tell you? And what does that tell younger generations of disabled people? And it's frustrating. It's really hard. And it shows up in everyday parts of our lives. It shows up when you go to the shops, to the pub, to public transport. It's everywhere. It's incredibly frustrating. But unfortunately, after 20 years of being paralyzed, I basically normalized this over here. I got so used to it. I was like, "Well, that's just the way it goes. As long as I can get in the room, even if I do have to go in around the back, with the broken glass through the bins and up through the goods lift, at least I'm in the room with my friends. That's enough." But the thing was, as I started riding across the U.S., every day I became more and more aware that that was having a detrimental impact on my mental health. 

And every day that I was driving more and more across the U.S., I started to realize how disabled I had become by that environment, and how less disabled I was becoming in the U.S., and how free I was becoming, and how happy I was becoming. Because every day, I didn't have to stop and call ahead to see if there was access if I wanted to have lunch somewhere. I didn't have to worry if there was a toilet. I could go into a place and I could say, "Excuse me, where are the ladies?" Instead of saying, "Do you have a disabled toilet?" Profound difference in those two questions. I could be driving along on the bike and I'd say, "Actually, I want to stop here tonight." And I'd just go on a website, and I could find the ADA room, and I could click into it, and I could book it, and I could do that. I could go to a national park, these massive incredible environments like Yellowstone, and I could just roll off on. I didn't have to worry about it. I didn't have to think about it. I could go with non-disabled friends or disabled friends alike. 

We could get into these spaces. And I have to say it was unbelievably profound for me. The absolute highlight of the trip was just going into Jackson. Within five minutes, I found an adaptive program. They got me on a kayak. They got me on a paraglider. I was jumping off a mountain, for crying out loud. And I was just pinching myself. I have been paralyzed all these years - I've not felt this way before. It was extraordinary. These adaptive experiences that are available to people in the U.S., you just really don't get them here. So I had this feeling that that's how you guys traveled - or not, sorry, people who are non-disabled, traveled. And this feeling of choice was there. And it was honestly, it was compounding, compounding, compounding every day, and it was making the trip better and better and better. Because see, the thing about the U.S. is, I've been calling it now "the land of the step-free," because there is this underlying foundation laid that access is built in. And of course, the cornerstone of this progress is the laws that are there, the ADA, the Americans for Disabilities Act - which was only passed in 1990, which is not that long ago. 

But in comparison to the U.K., it offers similar protections, but the U.S. framework is way, way, way more aggressive in its enforcement. And it mandates that public spaces, transportation, employment, private businesses, hotels, restaurants, airports, tourist attractions are required by law to accommodate everybody. So this is a landmark legislation. It's the leading in the world. It means that we can access the same experience and the same opportunities as everybody else. Now, as I rode deeper and deeper and deeper into the U.S., and all these shackles of inaccessibility left me, and that little magic word, the ADA, was in my back pocket. I could just drop it wherever I wanted to go, and I'd get in places. It was just a magical, like a magic wand. It was incredible. What that meant was, as I found this to be going along, I could raise my standards. The bars could raise. I could actually say that my expectations could lift. So yes, the ADA has undoubtedly made the U.S. a leader in accessibility, especially for disabled travelers. And the freedom and all of the things that we search for when we look to travel, exploration and adventure, all of those things were there. 

I had learned that, I found that. But what was happening was my standards were starting to raise, and I was starting to look ahead and say, actually, while accessibility is one thing, that's the bare minimum. What we're really all searching for is inclusion. So what is the difference between accessibility and inclusion? Well, it's the difference between asking, "Do you have a toilet?" And "Where is the toilet?" There's a foundation of the huge differences. It's also this lovely analogy of the difference between being invited to a party and being asked to dance. Now, having been jet-setting around the world for the last 20 years, give or take, to be honest with you - and more recently, I write a column for Condé Nast Traveler on accessible travel - I've been to some amazing places, but I have to say I can only list probably on one hand the amount of times I've actually really seen or experienced proper inclusion in a space. It's quite unusual to really tangibly notice it, like really actually see it. And I'm going to give you an example of it, but it does require me to take you away from the U.S. just for a little bit. 

You might assume that one of the most inaccessible destinations on the planet would be a sand island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, right? But there's a resort called Amilla in the Maldives, and they have basically proven that with just a few small steps, accessibility isn't just possible, so is inclusion. And what they did, so they were really keen to not just meet compliance - which a hard thing to do on a sand island, right? They were not just keen to meet compliance, they were also really keen to go beyond it. So they audited their space, and then they sought advice implementing some of the basics, whether it be grab rails, handles, all the stuff that you might imagine, hearing loops, all of that stuff. But then they went one step further. We had all of their staff trained in inclusion. So they learned all about disability language from all around the world; they learned about the social models of disability; they really went in deep, and they committed to embracing what they called total guest inclusion, because they just basically wanted to make sure that everybody that landed on that island - who arrived by seaplane, who they also worked with to make sure that the seaplane could accommodate people - they would make sure that they all had the same experience, exactly the same experience, so equity. 

And also made sure that they would allow their guests to be able to make informed decisions about what they wanted. So one of the problems we often have in the tourism industry is, people assume this is what does the access look like, this is what you need. And unfortunately, it doesn't always meet what people actually need. So we gave the power to the guests. We asked them to say, "What do you need? What do you need? You tell us and we'll meet that need." So for example, we gave them a questionnaire and we said in that questionnaire, things like, "How can we make your stay more comfortable?" It's a basic question. "How can we make you feel more at home?" Now, these are simple questions. The answers yielded some really interesting results. And I'll give you this little example. So one guest, he brought his dad with him, and his dad has an invisible disability. His dad had dementia. Which, of course, is a disability, right? And he does have access requirements, this man. He's able to walk, but he gets disorientated. And the answer to the question about, "How do you make yourself feel at home?" is, the son said his dad would watch his favorite film, and that would make him feel more safe. 

So Amilla decided every night in the open air cinema to put this film on for him, and add captions, because he didn't hear very well, and make them very large, because he couldn't see very well. They didn't make a big deal out of it. They just made sure that this film was always showing in the evening, in case this man felt disorientated and needed to feel grounded. That is what we talk about with inclusion. See, it's not about ramps. It's not just about widening doors. It's about giving people that sense that they belong, and giving people that feeling that they have a right to be there, too. Unfortunately, unlike accessibility, inclusivity is harder to legislate for. It does require excellent customer service and empathy and kindness and attention to detail, but it's not impossible, and it's certainly not expensive. It is something that is achievable. I just want to add, though, that after just one year, Amilla, who made an initial investment of $3,000 in all of this training, saw a return of $150,000. As a case study, it's compelling. So they're proof that it's worth investing in inclusion, and it can be done with just a few tiny tweaks. 

So I just want to ask you now, what do you think about when you think of a disabled traveler? Because I don't think people really understand what that looks like. Certainly when you close your eyes and I say, what's a disabled traveler look like? Does she look like me? Probably not. Does she look like that older man with dementia? I'm not sure. But we do know what the average profile of a disabled traveler actually looks like, and I think you would be surprised. And I would wish you could now learn this, so that you can take this forward and you could actually think about us in a different way. So we are active travelers. We travel more for pleasure than anything else. It's not just for medical reasons or for going to see our family. We travel for fun. In comparison to non-disabled travelers, we are more likely to take longer trips, and we're more likely to take them with other people, and we're more likely to return. And we spend 1.6 times more than the average non-disabled tourist. And this is one of my favorite things about us: if you offer a service or a trip to somebody and they have a good time, as a non-disabled person, they're likely to tell five people. 

A disabled person, if they have a good time, will tell 50 people. So I think that's a demographic that you should probably want to include. And of course, the figures are compelling. We are estimated to be one in four of the population. But I would argue that given there's so much stigma around the word disabled, many people, if they have a bad back, a bad knee, bad eyesight, wouldn't identify as disabled. But they'd certainly benefit from the accommodations that are being made for people who do. So we could probably estimate that number is larger, and I think we should. So the opportunity to become the ultimate destination for disabled travelers has never been more pressing, more exciting, I don't think, and more possible, certainly with the foundations that have been laid in the U.S. It is the land of opportunity for sure. And so, yeah, my ride through the U.S. was more than just a journey through this breathtaking, mind-blowing scenery. It was like a personal revolution for me, where freedom wasn't just this ideal; it was a lived experience. I felt it, I lived it, and I refused to let it go. So when I arrived in L.A. on the anniversary of my injury, I knew I couldn't go back. 

So I haven't. I've moved there, and I've lived there. And now I think I'm probably the biggest advocate for America you've ever met in your life, which is why I love being here today, and I'm really grateful for you listening to my story. I think now I can spend my life living. Honestly, no word of a lie, I spend my weekends skydiving and mountain biking and surfing and skiing and exploring all the cities as as well, I'm not just out in the sticks, I'm in the cities, and I'm lapping up the culture, the environment. It's just endless, the possibilities there. I also have, as I said, a group of Can-ams, the bikes, because the brand love me, because I'm always banging on about how great they are. They gave me a whole load. I've got them parked up in Santa Inez, which is this beautiful and incredible area. So we've got the bikes up there, and we offer free rides to women who've been going through challenging times for free, just to come out and ride with us and do amazing things. And I need to pay it forward. I found this gem of a life, and I want to share it. 

And I think the thing is, disability is: you are only as disabled as your environment. Really. If we can take away some of those barriers, that's one thing. But if we can then level it up and make people feel that they're welcome, then we can create a world that really is an equal playing field. Because you see, the Tetons reminded me that freedom is more about just the sense of freedom in the journey. It's about having the right and the opportunity to do the journey in the first place. And inclusion isn't some distant ideal; it isn't just out there as an elusive concept. It is a path that we can carve together, and we must. We always hear about these buzzwords about inclusion and about equity. But I would like to say it is time for us to shift that gear, to move from access into inclusion. So yes, let's not just build ramps, let's not just widen doorways. Let's expand our thinking, and let's create environments where everyone is not just invited to the party, but everyone is dancing at it. And I leave you with this a challenge to ask yourself: What is one step that you can take to make inclusion not just a buzzword, but a reality? 

Because the road to inclusion is already paved; it's just waiting for us to start the journey. Thank you. 

Mark Lapidus [0:32]: Sophie's message reminds us that disability rights aren't special rights, they're human rights. When we make travel accessible and inclusive for everyone, we don't just open doors; we open minds, hearts, and possibilities. As leaders in the travel industry, we have the power and the responsibility to create environments that enable rather than disable. That's it for today for Brand USA Talks Travel. Lots more Travel Week episodes coming. I'm Mark Lapidus, thanks for listening. 

Outro [32:14]: This episode was produced by Asher Meerovich, Nthanze Kariuki, and Casey D'Ambra. Special thanks to Alexis Adelson and Phil Dickerson. Engineering by Brian Watkins. If you enjoyed this Live From Travel Week U.K. and Europe episode, please share it with your friends the travel industry. Safe travels!

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