Ethics challenges: Health, safety and accessibility in international travel and tourism

Enormous increases in international travel by public sector employees and others, along with incidents of terrorism, accidents, and disease, raise a variety of ethical issues not normally covered in the training of public personnel administrators or in the standard administrative ethics course. Issues of accessibility for individuals with disabilities may be familiar to personnel administrators and students of ethics, but take on vast new dimensions when those individuals travel abroad. Travel-related ethics issues involved in health, safety, and accessibility may include identification of individual and institutional responsibilities, informed consent, contingency planning, emergency response mechanisms, fairness, and equal treatment. This study provides an overview of trends and issues, explores their ethical dimensions, and identifies relevant strategies to prepare public administrators to deal appropriately with these concerns. The study treats both tourist and educational travel abroad, and considers risks to host societies as well as to travelers.