{"id":74546,"date":"2019-11-27T17:05:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T15:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=74546"},"modified":"2019-11-20T10:42:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T08:42:05","slug":"21-05-48","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=74546","title":{"rendered":"Israeli vet builds site for travelers with disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Israeli vet builds site for travelers with disabilities<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Brian Blum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Travaxy website caters to people seeking accessible accommodations in Tel Aviv, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Barcelona, with more to come.<\/strong>
\nTravaxy aims to make traveling easier for people with disabilities. Photo by Shutterstock<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Lioz Amar had booked a hotel online for a trip to Barcelona. He specified that he needed a walk-in shower but when he got to the room, he discovered it only had a bathtub.<\/span><\/p>\n

That might have been a disappointment but not a deal breaker for most people. But Amar is not most people. In 2011, he was wounded during his service in the Israel Defense Forces and, since the age of 21, requires a wheelchair to get around.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI went to the front desk and I said I need a roll-in shower,\u201d Amar tells ISRAEL21c. \u201cThe guy brings out a \u2018certificate of accessibility\u2019 and says that this is an acceptable room. I said to him, put that paper aside for a second and think of me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem, Amar explains, is that there are no standards. A hotel can advertise that it\u2019s accessible but how high is the bed? Is there braille on the elevator buttons? If there\u2019s a knock on the door, will the lamp blink?<\/span><\/p>\n

Web-based booking forms rarely go into such detail. Calling every hotel in town before traveling would be an overwhelming task.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amar set out to fix that by creating an online travel site for people with disabilities. He called the site Travaxy<\/a>,<\/strong><\/span> a mashup of \u201ctravel\u201d and \u201caccessibility.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Every hotel on the site is vetted using a digital survey. And Travaxy displays only direct flights; you don\u2019t want to get stuck in a strange airport overnight because of a missed connection while your wheelchair is still in transit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lioz Amar, founder of Travaxy site for travelers with disabilities. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Travaxy hasn\u2019t built its own booking engine. \u201cWe have the same connections as at Booking.com or Expedia. On top of that, we have our own layer of hotels,\u201d Amar explains.<\/span><\/p>\n

Travaxy goes above and beyond online booking in many cases. \u201cA few days ago, a woman called and wanted to do a bar mitzvah trip for her son in Israel, but her husband was in an electric wheelchair. She couldn\u2019t find a bus that could accommodate the wheelchair at a reasonable price. I said, \u2018Let me try.\u2019 After five minutes, I came back with an offer. She said, \u2018Book it now.\u2019 Afterward she wrote to me that everything was perfect, especially the way the driver gracefully handled the father\u2019s needs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Booking via Travaxy also means if a disabled traveler runs into trouble \u2013 for example, his or her wheelchair breaks in transit (something Amar says \u201chappens at one time to everyone with a disability\u201d) \u2013 Travaxy can send a replacement part or an entire chair.<\/span><\/p>\n

15% of world population is disabled<\/strong><\/p>\n

The difference between Travaxy and mainstream travel sites is apparent as soon as you try to book a flight or hotel.<\/span><\/p>\n

You are asked what your disability is, whether you need assistance getting to the gate or disembarking, whether your wheelchair is manual or battery operated (and what kind of battery it has, important when checking the chair as luggage), and even the door width you require.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can\u2019t you make similar requests on popular travel booking sites? \u201cThey say you can do it,\u201d Amar replies. \u201cIt\u2019s politically correct to say so, but at the end of the day, it doesn\u2019t really happen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Travaxy has a staff person confirm every order offline. \u201cWe make sure that the request is getting noticed. So far, we\u2019ve had zero mistakes,\u201d Amar reports after the first month of operation, when the number of bookings was still in the hundreds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amar is confident those numbers will grow. \u201cFifteen percent of the world population is disabled,\u201d he claims. \u201cThat\u2019s 516 million people in developed countries. And they travel two to four times more than the usual traveler.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, 80% of disabled people \u201ctravel with two or more people with them who are not disabled.\u201d In 2017, disabled people booked 190 million holidays, Amar mentioned during an interview he gave to Israel\u2019s Channel 12.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paralympic champ<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amar has become one of those frequent travelers. \u201cWhen I was first injured, I found myself in bed saying, \u2018I\u2019m over, I\u2019m screwed, I\u2019m only half a person. What\u2019s the point?\u2019 I was like that for a year and a half. It was catastrophic for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Just when he was at his lowest, Amar discovered swimming as part of his rehabilitation process. \u201cI went into the pool, started to swim. I was free and fast. I could swim without being tied into a wheelchair. And people noticed. They said, \u2018You swim very fast; you need to talk to the coach.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amar went on to become a Paralympic champion, coming in seventh in the 100-meter breaststroke in the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing. \u201cLife as an athlete requires quite a lot of travel around the world,\u201d he notes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sport also turned around another aspect in Amar\u2019s life. He met the woman who would become his wife, Natalie, at a rugby tournament for wheelchair players. \u201cThe guys were playing, and she came to see a game. We saw each other, clicked, and we haven\u2019t left each other since.\u201d The couple now has a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amar worked for a while as a swimming instructor. He later picked up programming skills and found himself, in 2016, as \u201can entrepreneur who doesn\u2019t know how to be an entrepreneur, at least at first.\u201d Amar smartly surrounded himself with expertise.<\/span><\/p>\n

His business partner, Michal Ben Assage, worked for 24 years in the travel industry, most recently at Amadeus, the world\u2019s largest business-to-business travel platform.\u201cShe came with knowledge from the agent side. I came with the technology and the disability side,\u201d Amar says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Travaxy also partnered with the Daka90 Israeli \u201clast minute\u201d travel site.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very different from what they usually do,\u201d Amar says. \u201cPeople with disabilities don\u2019t generally look to book a flight for tomorrow. But they invested in us. They were cool enough to say that no one is treating this community right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Travaxy, which has a team of eight, operates out of Daka90\u2019s Tel Aviv office, home of inhouse accelerator Daka90 Labs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other strategic partners include Itai Green, CEO of Israel Travel Tech Startups, an incubator for tourism startups<\/a><\/strong><\/span>; and Mediterranean Towers Ventures, the investment arm of a company that runs luxury senior homes in Israel<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Older people often have accessibility needs when traveling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Travaxy raised $480,000 via the ExitValley Israeli crowdfunding platform<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Half of the money came from Mediterranean Towers Ventures in exchange for a 10% stake in the company. Arik Pinto, the retiring CEO of Bank Hapoalim, who walks with a cane since suffering from polio as a child, also invested. Travaxy is now looking to raise another $2 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Travaxy charges a commission on bookings, just like other online travel sites, fueling new features and new locations. The need to vet accommodations individually has kept the company from expanding willy-nilly: currently, you can book flights or hotels in Tel Aviv, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Barcelona.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thailand is next, Amar says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very popular destination but not very accessible. You need to know where you\u2019re going and who will serve you. But once you make the relationships, the culture there is to help. They don\u2019t mind me being in a wheelchair as long as I can bring more customers!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Israeli vet builds site for travelers with disabilities Brian Blum Travaxy website caters to people seeking accessible accommodations in Tel Aviv, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Barcelona, with more to come. Travaxy aims to make traveling easier for people with disabilities. Photo by Shutterstock Lioz Amar had booked a hotel online for a trip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74687,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74546\/revisions\/74687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}