Maleny’s Botanical Gardens and Bird World has a new accolade to add to their already impressive collection of awards with a Silver award for Excellence in Accessible Tourism at the recent 2024 Queensland Tourism Awards.

General Manager, Verena Olesch said the Award was in part, the result of a collaboration with E-Z-GO Golf Carts and Spinal Life Australia, to enable people with mobility issues the same opportunity to access the venue that all visitors enjoyed.

“Amongst our fleet of 20 buggies, we now have two wheelchair accessible buggies which enable people who use walking frames and wheelchairs to safely enjoy our grounds and all of the attractions we have on offer,” she said.

“The terrain here is already quite steep and challenging in places and the buggies allow our visitors to easily move around.

“We have also added an accessibility guide using Cerge technologies to our website, which has a 3D video and site maps so that visitors can ‘plan before they go’. The technology is designed for the vision and hearing impaired as well and attractions such as the bush tucker garden are very tactile. And of course, the experiences with the animals both in the aviaries and the farm are incredibly nurturing and rewarding.”

Staff have also been brought up to speed with disability awareness training.

“Over 70% of disabilities are not visible,” Verena said. “Because each disability is unique to each person, service and hospitality staff are often left to guess and as a result, can lack the awareness to deliver empathetic service to customers with disability. 

“This is obviously not deliberate, but the training has given our team the confidence to deliver exceptional service.

“It has truly been a team effort but we really want everyone to have the opportunity to experience and enjoy this magnificent place safely.”