Understand The Mountain Your Guests Climb Before They Even Walk In
The accessibility barriers for guests living with hidden disabilities and diagnosis such as autism, adhd, dyslexia, brain injury, chronic pain, visual and hearing impairments and for guests navigating your experience in their second or third language - and anyone with an increased mental load from grief, divorce or temporary illness.
Planning, researching, energy budgeting. For many of your guests, the hardest part of the visit is getting to the front door.
Most cultural institutions and tourist attractions act as though the guest experience starts at the entrance and accessibility relates only to wheelchair users.
Some have introduced the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower, which is great. That takes away some barriers and misunderstandings. But for a significant portion of your visitors, the experience starts days and weeks before. And by the time they arrive, they have already spent energy you did not know they had to spend.
I have interviewed more than 170 people about barriers in guest and employee experiences. Across attractions, cultural institutions, airports, public spaces, supermarkets.
The single most common theme is not what happens inside. It is what it takes to plan and get there.
The visit that costs three days
A man I interviewed had a brain haemorrhage five years earlier. He is the dad of two young daughters. He can manage a family outing. But every outing comes with a price. He has a fixed amount of energy each day, and he does not get more by resting. If he spends it on a visit, the next two days are gone.
So every decision becomes a calculation. Is this trip worth Tuesday and Wednesday? Can I afford this if we have something next week?
His wife once suggested they drive to the beach to watch the sunset. He said no. Not because he did not want to go. Because his brain needs time to prepare for even the smallest change of plan. Spontaneity is no longer available to him. Everything must be planned, weighed, decided in advance.
When he arrived at the attraction, his wife dropped him at the entrance and went to park. He walked in with his cane. Stood in the lobby. Nobody approached him. He was fine. He did not need help. But he thought about the person who would have.
The hotel bathroom that decides the trip
A young woman with autism, ADHD and Tourette syndrome described her preparation for visiting a family attraction. She did not start with ticket prices or opening hours. She started with hotels.
She needed a room with the right colours, the right lighting, natural materials. Bright white walls and clinical bathrooms overwhelm her. She spent most of her planning time finding a place to sleep that would not drain her before the visit even started.
She took public transport across the country. Three and a half hours in a train carriage with people coughing, typing, rustling. Even in the quiet zone, she could not filter it out. So she arrived the night before. Slept. Walked to the attraction the next morning with no music, no podcast, nothing. Just silence. To let her brain prepare.
Inside, she skipped the zone she actually wanted to see. She is a Formula 1 fan. The car racing area was exactly her thing. But it was packed with children, the noise was high, the space was tight. She could not afford the sensory cost. So she walked past it and spent her energy elsewhere.
The mother who plans every visit to the minute
A mother I interviewed through a theatre project described how she prepares for any cultural outing with her autistic daughter. She plans minute by minute. She looks at photos of the route from the train station to the venue. She shows them to her daughter several times a day in the days before. She researches the entrance, when there are most and fewest people, where the toilets are, and where she can take her daughter if it becomes too much.
Without that preparation, one of them risks being overwhelmed. And then they leave. With the disappointment of the experience they did not get. And the feeling of failure, because there was something they could not do that everyone else can.
This is not a rare case. This is what preparation looks like for a large number of your visitors. The ones with a chronic illness. The ones with a brain injury. The neurodivergent. The anxious. The ones managing invisible conditions you will never see on a booking form.
The mountain is not the visit. The mountain is everything before it.
When I present these findings to experience organisations, the first reaction is almost always surprise. Not at the stories. At the pattern.
Every person I interview, regardless of diagnosis, describes the same thing. A finite energy budget that starts draining long before arrival. Preparation that goes far beyond what most organisations imagine. And a tipping point where the cost of attending becomes higher than the cost of staying home.
That tipping point is where you lose them. Not inside your experience. Before it.
The question is whether your organisation makes the mountain higher or lower. Does your website tell visitors what to actually expect? Not marketing language. Practical information. What does it sound like? How busy is it at different times? Where can someone go if they need a break? Is there a way to plan the visit zone by zone so they can decide where to spend their limited energy?
Most organisations do not provide this. Not because they do not care. Because they designed their communication for the guest who does not need it.
That guest is the minority.
If you want to understand the barriers your guests face before they arrive, and what your organisation can do about them, that is what I work on.
SEO TITLE (max 100 characters): The Mountain Your Guests Climb Before They Walk In | Stine Marsal
SEO DESCRIPTION (max 400 characters): For many guests, the hardest part of visiting your attraction is not what happens inside. It is the days of planning, energy budgeting and mental preparation before they arrive. Based on 170+ interviews across attractions, airports and cultural institutions. The barriers are invisible. The cost is not.