Speaker 1: Welcome to TPGI's Real People, Real Stories podcast, where you'll find interesting and diverse stories from folks working to make the world a more inclusive place. Mark Miller: Hey, welcome to the Real People, Real Stories podcast brought to you by TPGI. I am your host, Mark Miller, thanking you for helping us keep it accessible. Do us a favor, if you're enjoying the real people, real stories podcast, share it. Tell someone about it. Hey, even link to it from your accessible website. Thank you everyone for joining. I want to introduce to you all Alvaro Silberstein. How did I do, good? Alvaro Silberstein: Perfect. Marissa Sapega: [inaudible 00:00:44] Mark Miller: Thank you for joining us, Alvaro. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. And I wanted to get into a little bit about what you do here. You've got an interesting concept, Wheel the World, where you've actually created an accessible travel experience. Is that right? Alvaro Silberstein: Yes, pretty much. First of all, thank you very much, Mark and Marisa too for the invitation. Eh, exactly. I am one of the co-founders of Wheel the World. And in one sentence, we make people with disabilities travel the world. That's pretty much what we do. Mark Miller: That's wonderful. So can you tell me a little bit about how this concept came about and why it feels like something where there's a story behind why you decided to do this? What inspired you? Alvaro Silberstein: Yes. So I have a disability myself since I'm 19 years old. I am a quadriplegic, I move by myself in a manual wheelchair. And always I've been passionate about travel and about getting to explore places before and after my accident. And one of the places that I always dream to visit was in the country that I grew up, and I'm living that right now in Chile, it was to visit Patagonia National Park. That is called Torres del Paine. Marissa has also been there. Marissa Sapega: Yes, I love it! It's so amazing. Mark Miller: What's the name of it, again? Say the name of it again for me. Alvaro Silberstein: Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia in Chile. Mark Miller: Beautiful. Alvaro Silberstein: So let me describe this place. This is like south of the world, not much civilization and urban areas, beautiful mountains and lakes and nature. And this the most visited travel destination in Chile, I would say. It's like the Yosemite National Park of Chile. And I always dreamed to visit that place because all my friends went at some point, and I saw all these pictures of this beautiful place, but I always assumed that it was impossible for me, given that I move myself in a wheelchair, and this destination, as many others around the world, would not have the accessibility that I need. But one day with a very good friend, his name is Camilo, today, he's my co-founder at gowheeltheworld.com, and we started to figure out on how to plan a trip, both of us and three other friends to Torres del Paine. And I had a lot of fears about it, but we still started planning it. We realized that nobody else in a wheelchair did the trip that we wanted to do, that was to do the whole W Trek, that it's called. It's like five days hiking this national park, and we needed to find what were the accessible accommodations to stay, how we would move around. We needed a special hiking wheelchair to explore these trails, and that cost like $6,000, and we didn't have the money to acquire it. So that was the one of the aha moments that we said, "Okay, let's transform our trip into a project." Let's do the very first time the W Trek in a wheelchair, me and my friends, but then allow this trip to be repeated by other people, like let's raise the information on how to do it. Let's fundraise this equipment that we needed. We leave it there, so other people can repeat it after me. Mark Miller: Oh, you actually left this hiking wheelchair there for other people? Alvaro Silberstein: Exactly. So we did this- Mark Miller: That's wonderful. Alvaro Silberstein: It was amazing. It was beautiful for me. It was a dream come true. It was amazing for my friends. It was great for people who worked for the travel industry there, because it was kind of a special thing, right? And then the second aha moment was after, because we filmed a low cost documentary that really went viral, and many people started reaching out saying, "Oh, this is so cool. I also have a disability. And I also want to do this trip." Or like people saying, "I have a friend, I want to bring him to do this trip [inaudible 00:05:13]." So we started organizing this trip to other people, and at that point, we were not a company, we were not an agency, nothing. But we started realizing that we could replicate what we were doing in Torres del Paine in many other destinations. And that's when we decided to found Wheel the World, and a start up based in California and in Chile because at that point I was living in California, my co-founder is still living there. I came back to Chile and then we start up. Well, long story short today, we offer more than 200 travel offers in our website that is gowheeltheworld.com. More than 1000 people already has booked trips with us. Marissa Sapega: That's awesome. Mark Miller: So, my first question is... A lot to talk about in terms of the website and the business, but my first question is I'm fascinated with this concept of a white hiking wheelchair. What is different about a wheelchair they would use for hiking than the one that you kind of use in day-to-day? Alvaro Silberstein: Yes, so it was... The one that we used for Torres del Paine, and we also have that a chair in many other destinations, for example, Machu Picchu in Peru, or we have it Lake Tahoe in the US, et cetera. It's a one wheel wheelchair, okay. That you need to be pushed by other people, one in the front, one in the back. And it allows people to push you through very narrow trails, very comfortable. So it's not that they are pushing it very uncomfortable, and they will have like a big back pain after, like pushing you for five days in Patagonia. No, it's a team effort because you you can have being pushed by two or three people, but in a very comfortable way. It has these brakes for going down, and it has some harnesses to go more comfortable and allows you to go places that in a conventional wheelchair will be just impossible. Marissa Sapega: Wow. Mark Miller: Wow, that's amazing. And obviously there's these... I don't think I've ever seen one of these, but they must been around for awhile, right? So this initial trip, you used that as a template to not just create a website, but to create at least other trips or other situations that where... This is what's fascinating me, is it's not just the access to be able to plan the trip, right? You're actually providing different types of accommodations once people get there, like this accessible wheelchair. Is there anything else that you've branched out into other than the hiking, the accessible wheelchair... That's not the way to say that, the hiking wheelchair. Or is that what you've done so far? Alvaro Silberstein: Yeah. So it's a longer story because... And we actually started yes, like trying to create adventures, accessible travel experiences in places like Patagonia, Machu Picchu, Oaxaca in Mexico. Was that you or me? I'm sorry. Mark Miller: It's okay, that's exciting. It sounds like you're very important, Alvaro. Was that the government trying to contact you for some special forces needs or something? Marissa Sapega: Yeah, it sounds like your cell phone has a very unique ring. Alvaro Silberstein: I'm so sorry, I don't know. I had something open in my browser [inaudible 00:09:08]. Mark Miller: I think you're a spy. And that was a- Marissa Sapega: It's just a cover. Mark Miller: Yeah, that was clandestine content. Alvaro Silberstein: I'm sorry. So what I was explaining that what we started doing is actually, to be honest, all the dream places that I wanted to visit, and I saw as an impossible, we started figuring out with our team to, okay, how we can design an accessible experience, so we can allow people like me to go to these places. And actually that was our initial destinations that we opened. And we started making people travel to these places, but we realized that the majority of people that get to know to our story and our website, they were saying like, "Oh, I found this amazing, but I really need to find an accessible hotel in Mexico City or in a hotel in Barcelona, Spain. And the majority of the people that went to our website were saying like, "These guys that are going to Patagonia are crazy, I am still figuring out with a lot of uncertainty to plan a trip to New York or to Madrid." So we realized that the problem was much bigger than just opening adventure travel for people with disabilities. It was like traveling in general, because it's very hard to plan a vacation if you have a disability. And we started then raising information in detail about accessibility and accommodations and activities. That means that today we are through an app and our community, we are collecting detailed information about, for example, the width of accessible doors in a hotel, the height of the bed, pictures about how the bathroom looks like, and we're collecting all this information, more than 200 listings today we offer at gowheeltheworld.com. Not only adventure trips to Patagonia, but also accessible accommodations in New York or in San Francisco, so people can book it. So we kind of transitioned from an adventure travel focus company into an accessible travel company, which we've been allowing in the past three years to people to find accessible accommodations, and also multi-day trips for different places. And we are finding what are those accessible places to stay and accessible things to do at destinations, and collaborating with local operators so we can offer this to our travelers at the end of the day. Marissa Sapega: Oh, that's terrific. So I do want to ask you, you said that a lot of the destinations that you started out with where ones that you had wanted to do yourself, so you said now you have over 200 destinations, have you gone through each of them yourself? Alvaro Silberstein: No, no, no. Today, we have around 50 destinations. I don't know. I've been, let's say eight or something like that, because we- Mark Miller: You've got a lot of work to do, then. Alvaro Silberstein: Yes, yes. And today, we're at a 23 people team. And we also have a community of more than 30,000 people that also wants to collaborate. They also can try and can collect the information to offer these kind of trips. So yes, it's much bigger than just me, and we still want to collaborate with more organizations and grow our team to impact more people. Mark Miller: So with the name of the company, and with you using a wheelchair yourself, the name of the company being Wheel the World, obviously from an accessibility standpoint, you came at it from that perspective, right? What's needed, and you have the hiking wheelchair and all that. As this is grown, have you started to accommodate and seeing the need to accommodate different types of disabilities beyond the wheelchair? Alvaro Silberstein: Yes. We have had clients, like blind travelers, people with with cognitive disabilities, also seniors, So people who can walk, but they might need some assistance to go to more challenging destinations, but our focus, because you need to focus and needs are different between different disabilities, and our focus, of course, is mobility. So people with mobility challenges that can be adults with disabilities or seniors that also have some mobility challenges, or like many times, families with a kid with a cognitive disability. That's would be the type of travelers that are most popular through our community. And we dream that in the future, we will expand more aggressive to other disabilities, right? At the beginning, we were wondering if our name would work in a broader space, right? Because it's not just people in wheelchairs, right? And it still works, it works actually. I don't know, we've been always trying to create a brand that people likes. If doesn't matter if they have a disability or not, because I've been in a wheelchair and I am part of a disability community for 17 years. And always every brand, every service that is designed for us or focusing on in us, it's not that cool, right? They use the word care, they use the blue color, [inaudible 00:15:22] as hospitals, right? And since the beginning, we tried to create Wheel the World as a cool brand, a brand that is allowing people to make their dreams come true, because that's kind of the initial thing, how it all started, right? And that's how it's allowed people that not necessarily are wheelchair users to actually want to be involved with us in a good way, and reach us when they have an accessibility need when traveling. Marissa Sapega: Yeah. I see your logo has the active person in a wheelchair, not the passive. I like it. Alvaro Silberstein: And the Torres del Paine is here. Marissa Sapega: Yes, yes! The three guys, yes! Awesome. Mark Miller: That's a really interesting point that you make. And I'm glad you guys took that approach to make a cool company, because in our business, the business that Marissa and I are in, we work with web accessibility for all different types of people with disabilities. And so we're kind of fortunate to really be exposed to the community of people with disabilities in a way that a lot of people aren't. And you definitely feel that, that anything that is for people with disabilities tends to have a cold, medical, or almost like a... it's almost like it feels patronizing sometimes. You need help so we're going to help you. And I know that the community of people with disabilities is no different than any other community. It just happens to be people with disabilities. And so to see somebody like you come in and say, "We're going to do this." And it's going to be cool, and it's not at all patronizing, right? It's just empowering and it's fulfilling a need just like any other business would be. And I think that's a really cool approach, and I think it's really great that you and your team recognized that from the beginning. Alvaro Silberstein: Yeah. And, it's exciting too, because people like it, right? And one of the things that I have really enjoyed so far at Wheel the World is all the brand creation and the concept creation and the communication and howto make changes around that, like change perceptions around disabilities. It's something that is still so needed, right? Many organizations are doing it, and I think it's crucial to achieve the cause that we are all in. Mark Miller: Right. Marissa Sapega: So what's been your favorite place to visit? And what activities did you think like, "Oh, I don't know if I'd be able to do this," but then you went and you were able to do it? Alvaro Silberstein: That's a great question. I think that... Well, Torres del Paine, being able to be in that place was a gift for me. And many times I had some prejudgments before the trip with that wheelchair, because I always tried to be as much as independent as possible. Still, I may need help during the day, I'm okay with that, but I push myself to be as independent as possible, pushing myself in the streets, et cetera. And this is totally the opposite. I would be going to be pushed pretty much all the time, but at the end of the day, it was... what are the cons? The benefit of it was to be in this amazing, beautiful place that I was [inaudible 00:19:18]. The other place was in Peru next to Machu Picchu, we offer there a bike ride experience with adaptive bikes through... called the Sacred Valley, and it's amazing. You can check the pictures through our Instagram or our website, it's beautiful. And the good thing there is that we have two kinds of bikes there. One is a hand bike, you can crank with your arms, and the other one is like a recumbent trike that it's like a three wheel bicycle that people that have some problems with equilibrium or back pains. And what we do is we attach both chairs so the recumbent trike can assist the person who is in their hand bike if they have not enough strength in their arms. Mark Miller: Oh, that's interesting. Alvaro Silberstein: Not only that, when I did that experience, we went with a blind person. So a blind person, if you are fully blind, you need to go on tandem bikes, right? So this kind also was used as a tandem bike. And the blind person, my blind friend was on the recumbent, and I was in the hand bike, so he was much stronger than me, so he was like cranking and pushing. Marissa Sapega: Oh, that's awesome. Alvaro Silberstein: And I was dealing the direction because I see where the road was, and I also was describing him there the landscapes. So that was one of my favorite moments in my life, I would say. Marissa Sapega: Yeah, that sounds incredible. I love it. Mark Miller: That's really cool. That leads me to another question that I've had. Now that you're as big as you are. And it sort of is, is a wide reaching as it is, you must hear stories from users of your website all the time. Can you give us like a favorite story or something that's really touched you, or been inspiring or validated, right? Like all this hard work you've put into creating this company. Is there one story that kind of stands out, is that... Alvaro Silberstein: Yes, we have many powerful stories. Most of them very beautiful. A number of them have been pretty much sad because of people that were very close with a tragic disease, and they couldn't do the trip that they were planning with us because the disease was moving too aggressive. But let's get, to the most beautiful ones. One of them is a person who has never got into a plane before because she was fearing so much to travel by herself. And she reaches out, and her dream was to see these big statues in Easter Island, [inaudible 00:22:31]. Mark Miller: Yeah, the big Easter Island heads. Alvaro Silberstein: Yes. She's from Chile actually, and that was her dream. She never thought that it was possible for her to visit this place. And she booked the trip with us. And because it was the first time of her getting into a plane, she thought that she needed to be five hours before the trip. We were like, "No, that's fine. You can go two hours before, and you will be totally fine. Mark Miller: That's what everybody needs to do nowadays. Alvaro Silberstein: And she was our first client that was traveling solo. Most of our travelers goes with a companion because the majority of people travel with other people right? But she was traveling by herself, so we were kind of giving a little more care of her, of course, because she was traveling for the first time and by her own. And after three days that she was in Easter Island, I called her. Camilo called her, my co-founder. And he asked her like, "How are you doing? How's your trip?" And she says, "It's amazing, it's the best experience of my life. I've already done a typical Easter Island in my [inaudible 00:23:53], and I am going to get back home and I will start earning money to travel again with you guys." Marissa Sapega: Oh, that's awesome! Mark Miller: I think that that independence that she must've felt, that's got to be just an incredible gift. It's like you couldn't do something and then to go on your own and do it and have that independence. That's got to be amazing. Alvaro Silberstein: And also what happened is she, as many other travelers, she started being part of our community. So today she lives in a city here in Chile, and she's one of our mappers because we build a community of mappers, people going to the accommodations and places to map accessibility so we can offer it through gowheeltheworld.com. And she's one of our most active people collecting information about accessibility. Mark Miller: Incredible. Alvaro Silberstein: And actually was one of our first clients, so things like that happen all the time. Mark Miller: Have you had a chance to meet her in person? Alvaro Silberstein: Yes, yes. Mark Miller: That must've been... Did you know her beforehand or did she do the trip and then you met her? Alvaro Silberstein: After the trip, I met her. We have kind of a rule at Wheel the World, we are already 20 people, and today we are booking trips to around average 40 people per month. But we have a rule that all of us must interview a traveler after the trip, at least five a month, so we can gather feedback and know about them and see how they can be part of our community. Mark Miller: I can just imagine though how great that must have been for the two of you to meet after that experience. You had to be excited because of the success that you created and then she must've been excited because of just the independence and the success that she had in taking this trip. That's amazing, you've got to have the most rewarding days. Alvaro Silberstein: Yeah, yeah. I'm so happy with... in the, let's say industry, that we are, the travel industry today, it's very harsh, right? And we are passing through hard times, but it's such good to provide your services, to providing service to people and memories, right? Like things that you really want to do, that's very rewarding. And of course, if you add the compliment of that we people with disabilities, we decided it's hard for us to have this kind of experiences. It adds more special thing, and let's hope that it's not special anymore because it's not special anymore. It will be not an issue, and I'm totally inclusive, right? Mark Miller: Totally inclusive. We love that. Well, Alvaro, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've loved hearing about this, your company. We do have to wrap this up though. Is there anything that you want to share that we haven't covered that you think would be really important for the listeners to know about you? Alvaro Silberstein: Yes. The invitation to people to go and visit our website, gowheeltheworld.com. We invite them. If you want to travel with us, please go and see our listings. If you want to help us out collecting information about accessibility, also you can find the information through our website and the invitation is for you and for everyone to keep on making this world accessible, and it's exciting to know people like you that are in the same scene as us. Marissa Sapega: Yes. Mark Miller: Very good. Marissa Sapega: Thank you. Mark Miller: Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate you sharing, and what wonderful stories and just what wonderful experiences you're creating for people. So it's very inspiring and we appreciate you being on the show with us. This is Mark Miller thanking Alvaro, Marissa, and reminding you to keep it accessible. Speaker 1: This podcast has been brought to you by TPGI. The experts in digital accessibility. Stay tuned for more Real People, Real Stories podcasts coming soon.