Well, here I am in Northampton visiting my daughter. Booked the hotel online, asked for an accessible room or near the lift as I may have My wheelchair with me. Arrived at the hotel tonight. Disabled space 2m from the door so Decide to use my stick. Leave my chair in the car. When I was checking in the manager came to see me. Asked me to fill in a form Asking about what assistance I would need in an emergency. Since the awful Grenfell Tower fire and because I have mobility problems and no carer a man , Andy. Has to stay the night in the room next door to me with an evac chair. The manager phoned him so I could meet him. He gets his evening meal and breakfast paid for. He was having his meal with his wife… then she was going home. Andy showed me my room pointed out where his room was and said if I needed anything just phone him. Can’t be in an accessible room as they are on the 3rd floor, I have to be on 1st floor for evacuation procedure, may be a problem for people. Night night. Jen x
Sorry, did put a lines between paragraphs. Think my phone removes then.
Accessible rooms in hotels are so often a disgrace.
I’ve several times been in an ‘accessible room’ with an inward opening door that is weighted to close behind you. A wheelchair user has absolutely zero chance of opening the door to leave the room alone. So we’ve managed because I’ve been travelling with my OH. But I always point out to the management how incredibly dangerous it is.
So to have an accessible room on a floor that you can’t use because of evacuation essentially means there is no accessible room.
Sue
I would imagine it`s Health and Safety as in Fire Regulations.
It’s a nightmare. Even a brand new Travelodge I used has weighted doors. Best Western in Cambridge was the worst. asked for no stairs when booking. The disabled parking was at the back with a locked disabled entrance then they said I couldn’t use the lift and had to go up 2 flights of stairs. My vociferous complaints rang loud across the foyer. SteveI
I have used Trip Advisor to express my views on a “accessible room”
Geoff
I use my OH to post on Trip Advisor on similar issues. There was one hotel where the shower only had a monsoon head, directly above the shower seat. Impossible to get ones head out of the torrent. Another hotel had a shower that was entirely made of extremely beautiful, shiny black marble, including the walls, the (bench) seat, and the floor. A recipe for utter disaster. Luckily this was India, where they will do all they can to rectify matters so had a kind of solution - sucker pad mats for floor and bench (they also raised the bed height for me!). Yet another had no shower, only a bath (we knew this in advance but were staying only a couple of days so decided it would be OK) but I couldn’t get near the sink as it had a very pretty 5 inch wide marble surround on the sink. So I cleaned teeth and washed leaning over the bath. And the list could go on …
Sue
Last year I had to go to London for work. The legs were starting to fail me, so I was using the chair. Was told by the hotel that all the rooms had walk in showers and that I would be given one of their larger rooms because I had the wheelchair. The room was large - good news so far. The walk in shower actually had an 18 inch step up to it. I phoned reception and was told that all their rooms were like that. After much huffing and puffing, I managed to get in to the shower. Thankfully the shower cubicle itself was fairly small, so that if I lost balance, I couldn’t fall down. Earlier this year whilst in Liverpool with my wife and daughter we were given the accessible family room on the fourth floor. The family room itself was great. The problem came at 7:30am when the fire alarm went off. No one came to our rescue. My wife hurried down the four sets of stairs to thankfully find it was a false alarm. I waited for her and only afterwards seriously thought about what would have happened if there had actually been a fire and will always think of this when making future arrangements. Derek
Oh Derek. Fire alarm sounds scary. That’s why I’ve got Andy. Second night in hotel. Bit like school I have to tell reception when I go out and Come back in. My room has a shower but love a bath, with a step and hand rails. Night night again. Jen
just back from a 3 night stay in a very accessible hotel in Blackpool.
But we were on the 3rd floor and there was an ego evacuation chair hanging in the hallway…but no-one said anything special about it! We were advised to read the safety/evac instructions on the room door.
Does anyone ever read it?
pollsx
I’m not too keen on hotel rooms for people with disabilities. They are often on the ground floor, which is good, but they can be noisy. Two months’ ago I had an incident in a hotel room in Brighton - the bathroom had grab rails, but the shower cubicle was up a step, and the floor tiles were very smooth. In the morning, I came out of the shower, slipped on the step and went flying. I hit my head falling back on the step, blood everywhere. I called my wife who came in and picked me up off the floor. I went down to breakfast, told them about my fall and they gave me an ice pack, which I stuck on my head as I ate my breakfast. The hotel wouldn’t admit liability, but gave me the room at half price, if I complained about the noise instead, which I did. I always look at hotel bathroom floors very carefully now.
I think they do Poll, it’s usually where you find hilarious mistakes and instructions, you can find books dedicated to that type of thing! I like stupid signs myself used to take photos of them. I particularly liked one in Prague, which had an arrow and said piercing up passage - may have been deliberate, but still amused me and Revengers garage also made me smile as they seemed to specialise in cars that had, had accidents,this was in Cyprus and they were on racks… looked like a car A&E! but seriousy yes I’d read it, particularly if they brought it to my attention and I wasn’t on the ground floor.