We recently met Andyamo's team, a young Start up team behind a solidarity project to facilitate travel for people with disabilities. Very interested in the project and aware of this cause, we interviewed one of its 3 founders.
Ciao Marco! Can you tell us about your background?
Ciao a tutti,
My name is Marco Petitto, I am of Italian origin and more precisely from Rome. I came to France for love, to join my wife Tiphaine at the age of 28. It was quite easy to integrate into French life. The croissant, butter, baguette and aperitif made it easier! Sleeping in even more!
My passion and knowledge for tourism and travel led me to look for a job in the hotel business in Nice. The contact with customers, their stories and the international atmosphere made me travel every day.
Until the day your life changes on a ski slope...
Following my skiing accident in 2015, I became quadriplegic. Disability hasn't stopped me from dreaming! I continued to travel from my clinic room thanks to television documentaries, but it was not enough. My first adventure outside the medical field was to take the bus to downtown Grenoble. What courage! But it still wasn't enough.
What do you think are the obstacles to travel for a person with a disability?
In the early days at the clinic, I wondered why my colleagues in wheelchairs preferred to stay in their city rather than go away. No disability should be a barrier to the desire to escape and travel, yet the reality is very different. I spend much more time organizing my trip than an able-bodied person. I have to make sure that the means of transport are arranged to accommodate my chair, that the road is flat and that tourist attractions such as museums, hotels and restaurants are truly accessible. I also asked my friends to go there to draw me a route on a map of the city.
And that's when you created Andyamo?
After talking to two friends (Sébastien Guillon & Florian Blanchet), I decided to launch a project that would try to bridge these mobility gaps. I then created Andyamo, which means "Let's go" in Italian, in order to offer travel itineraries adapted to people with reduced mobility (to download for free on
andyamo.fr). We are now established in
15 cities and are in contact with several communities of people with disabilities in order to best meet their expectations
