According to the 2010 US Census, one in every five Americans has disabilities. Hotels should accommodate all kind of guests, including guests who are differently abled. To accommodate guests with disabilities, you need to make arrangements accordingly.
While the type of disability may vary, it is important for those in the hospitality industry to try their best to accommodate a wide range of guests with a wide range of abilities. You can’t ignore that large market as you could be shutting out a huge number of potential guests from your property.
We offer few suggestions:
Wheelchair Accessible Rooms: By offering a wheelchair-accessible room, you can allow unhindered access to the hotel room and other areas. You need to have barrier-free passages and wheelchair lifts. Your corridors need to be connected to the rooms, lounges and seminar rooms in the hotels for convenient access without using steps.
Spacious Rooms: Offer your guests plenty of freedom of movement to move around in the room by building spacious rooms for the disabled. Most of the hotels are built without limitations and have specially designed rooms for wheelchair users. There has to be a spacious bathroom, double and single bed and wide halls to provide your disabled guests with optimum mobility.
Other Services: Many hotels offer service animals on their property or offer special assistance to guests who need it. Guests can have rooms with amenities like roll-in showers, light alerts for the hearing impaired, lower shelving, multi-level door viewers and communication kits with strobe lights, visual door knocker, shaker alarm clock and TDD teletype.
Having an accessible room for the disabled guests attracts people with disabilities as well as their friends and family. Additionally, it pays to have an accessible property. It is estimated by the Americans with Disabilities Act that by the year 2030, 71.5 million Baby Boomers will be over the age of 65 and in need of amenities and services that address their age-related physical changes.
Hotels must welcome people of all kinds of disabilities across the board. Properties have to be mindful of how they cater to their employees, too. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires that employers provide reasonable accommodation to all qualified employees with disabilities. Western Europe currently leads the world in accessible tourism, so what is holding your property back? You can always look to industry experts like the Open Doors Organization for inspiration or support for your efforts.
As most of the hotels are making amendments for their guests, don’t be left out in the race. You need to build basic amenities to accommodate such guests. To streamline your operations and spend more time with guests, please try out our cloud PMS services and reduce the load from your staff. Our Cloud PMS is easy to adapt and an extremely simple hotel management solution that centralizes all your hotel operations like FrontDesk, Housekeeping, Restaurant, Point of Sale etc.
Take a free trial and see how it works for your hotel.