Whether it’s for a fun getaway or for work, staying at a hotel is usually an experience people enjoy. Getting away from day to day life is often something many people look forward to. Regardless of the length of time, staying in a different environment is usually kind of fun. Whether it’s the waterpark, the sauna, the workout room, or a different amenity, it’s often fun to look around and see what the place has to offer. For people with physical disabilities, exploring hotels is also enjoyable experience; however, we often look at different things.  How many people walk into a hotel room and the first thing they look at is the toilet seat? I certainly hope not many people, but for me that’s reality. Yes, it sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it’s true. Let me explain.

In past entries, I’ve mentioned that as a child my family traveled a lot. My parents wanted my sister and I to see and experience as much as we could. We stayed in hundreds of hotels across the country and beyond. Obviously, each hotel has different amenities and features.   “Accessible” rooms are available at most places these days which is nice; however, we’ve learned the word “accessible” can widely vary.  Many times, we’ve found that it’s better to ask for a reason with “more space” rather than an accessible room.  In many cases, accessible rooms have only one king-size bed in them.  For obvious reasons, that doesn’t work so well when there are multiple people staying in the room.  The accessible rooms often aren’t the rooms with the most space either.  Using a power wheelchair, I need space to maneuver around.  I’ve been in rooms where there wasn’t enough space to turn my chair around—I had to literally back my chair out of the doorway into the hotel hallway.  We’ve learned that when we book a hotel room, we not only ask for an accessible room, but also a room with lots of space.

Often, accessible rooms have roll-in showers.  Some hotels provide a basic shower chair; some people bring their own.  My shower chair is very customized and pretty cumbersome, so I’m not able to travel with it.  For various reasons, I can’t take a shower when I stay at hotels, so I sponge bathe and wash my hair in the sink.  That can be if (and it’s a big if) my wheelchair can get into the bathroom; I usually can’t fit it under the sink.  My mom and I have learned to get creative and can usually figure out a way.  As I mentored earlier, when I first enter a hotel room, the toilet seat truly is the first thing I look at.  Why you ask?  Because I’m notorious for breaking them.  Many hotels have inexpensive toilet seats with plastic hinges.   When I sit on them and move to stabilize myself, the hinges often crack.  At my apartment and at my parents’ house, we’ve put knobs on the bottom of the seat so it can’t shift back and forth.  Obviously, we can’t carry a toilet seat around everywhere we go, so my dad brings little toolkit along and he tightens the bolts on the seat.  When I’m on those kinds of seats, I have to be careful how I reposition myself.  I’ve broken way too many!

Another thing in hotels that sometimes cause issues for people with disabilities are the beds.  Depending on ability, higher beds are easier for people to transfer in and out of; for some, lower beds are better.  Everyone has a preference about bed mattresses.  Some people like a very soft pillow top mattress while others like more of a firm one.  Most hotels seem to have pillow top ones.  For me, personally, those don’t work out to well because my body sinks in and I don’t have the muscle strength to move my extremities around on it.  My muscles get very stiff on pillow top mattresses, but obviously when making reservations,, people can’t request a certain type of bed.

We’re a big swimming pool people in my family—we love to swim!  Swimming is so good for my muscles.  When we go on vacation, it’s usually centered around swimming.  For people with physical challenges, just accessing the pool deck can be a struggle.  Although, it’s vastly improved in recent years, stairs would be the only way to access the pool area at some hotels.  When I was young, my parents took my stroller or manual chair on vacation, so my dad would just tilt me back and bump me up and down the steps.  That changed as I got older and wanted my power chair so I could move around independently.  We’ve had to cancel reservations and find a different hotel due to this.   Once I’m in the pool area, another challenge is getting into the actual pool.  Thanks to a law, hotel pools are now required to have a chair lift to help people with various physical limitations get in and out of the pool.  Most pools we’ve been at recently do have one; however, the problem is either the lift isn’t working or the hotel staff doesn’t know how it works.  Over the holidays, my parents and I were in Florida for about three weeks and stayed in multiple hotels.  At many of the hotels the lifts were not working.  At one of the places, the repairman tried to fix it, told us it’d be fixed by the end of the week, but it wasn’t.  Luckily, my parents are still able to get me in and out of the pool so I was able to swim; hotels, it’s not very safe.  I think part of the problem is that the lifts don’t get used very often, so routine maintenance doesn’t happen.  Perhaps a requirement of a monthly maintenance check would help with this.

In my opinion, hotel accessibility has a long way to go.  I didn’t even discuss the many other accessibility issues the general public likely doesn’t even think twice about it.  Things such as curb cutouts, automatic doors, accessible counters, and wide doorways (just to name a few) are other things people with physical limitations have to consider when looking at hotels.  It’s getting better, but there’s definitely room for improvement! 

***The views expressed here are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of InControl Wisconsin, the Network or any of our sponsors.