Fwd: [RD] Hotels Dealing with Accessibility

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" Hotels Dealing with Accessibility "

> From the New York Times:

Hotels Learn to Deal With Disability

By DAVID KOEPPEL

Published: February 17, 2004

It is one thing to mandate rights to the disabled and

another for service providers to treat them with

sensitivity and respect. But executives with disabilities

say the travel industry finally seems to be getting it

right.

The 12-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act gets a lot

of credit for forcing a national re-evaluation of attitudes

toward the disabled. And with spending by disabled

travelers exceeding $3 billion a year, an industry that

operates on razor-thin profit margins has become eager to

please, even hiring consultants to train employees on how

to behave.

Whatever the causes, the difference between now and then is

striking. Just ask Sharon Myers, a medal-winning in the

Para-Olympics.

Paralyzed by polio since she was 3, Ms. Myers, a 56-year-

old Virginian, recalled being carried onto a plane in

Cincinnati more than 20 years ago, only to be kept waiting

as the pilot and ground crew argued for 45 minutes about

who was responsible for taking her to her seat.

" I was sitting facing every person on that plane, " Ms.

Myers, now the director for disability affairs at the

Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality, said at a

conference that her nonprofit consulting group organized in

Miami last month. " Here I was a world ambassador in sports,

experiencing my most humiliating travel encounter. No one

even apologized. "

For Ms. Myers and other travelers with disabilities,

however, such ordeals have become rarer as employees in

hotels, restaurants, airports and car-rental agencies have

learned more about their special needs, both physical and

emotional.

" In the last few years, I have been treated with the utmost

respect whenever I fly, " Ms. Myers said. " There's been an

absolute turnaround.''

When she first started traveling for sports competitions

and conference appearances in the 1960's and 70's, it was

often impossible for her to get her wheelchair through the

bedroom doors of hotels. These days, she generally has no

such problem, especially if she specifies in advance that

she wants an accessible room with roll-in showers and hand-

held showerheads.

Disabled travelers spend about $3.6 billion a year,

according to a 2003 study by the Open Doors Organization, a

Chicago-based group that researches services and products

for disabled customers. The study showed that of America's

54 million disabled people, about 2.8 million travel solely

for business and an additional 2.5 million combine business

and leisure travel. It suggested that disabled people would

travel more frequently and stay longer if the industry

worked harder to accommodate their needs.

Cheryl Duke, the president of WC Duke Associates in

Woodford, Va., has heard plenty of horror stories about the

rude behavior of service providers, like the hotel waiter

who embarrassed a blind business traveler by shouting,

" Who's going to pay this blind guy's bill, " and employees

at another establishment who turned away blind customers

with guide dogs because animals were not allowed on the

premises.

WC Duke runs a training program called Opening Doors to

educate service providers on the dos and don'ts of dealing

with disabled travelers. Ms. Duke, along with her husband

and son , conduct about 60 training programs a

year for hotel, airline and restaurant personnel of clients

like American Airlines, Embassy Suites and the

Intercontinental Hotel Groups, the parent of the Holiday

Inn chain. She says the company's videos have been used

about 75,000 times in the last five years, and that its

revenues have more than doubled in that time.

Murray Krasnoff, an Orlando tour operator and part-time

trainer for the Opening Doors program, said that he had

frequently seen employees ignore wheelchair customers by

directing all their questions to an able-bodied companion.

" I tell them it's their legs that don't work, not their

mouths, " Mr. Krasnoff said at a workshop he led called the

" Ten Commandments of Disability " at last month's Society

for Accessible Travel and Hospitality conference. " People

are so afraid of doing the wrong thing. Not doing anything

is the worst thing you can do. "

Hence the Second Commandment: " It's never wrong to offer

help to persons having disabilities. " It is wrong, however,

to call a disabled person, " crippled, " " handicapped " or any

other antiquated or offensive expression. It is also wrong

to ask someone how he became disabled or to lean on a

wheelchair.

Even though basic courtesy might seem like common sense,

Constantine Zografopoulos, 41, a wheelchair user and

frequent business traveler, said that only in the last two

or three years have these basic rules been observed by many

employees.

Mr. Zografopoulos runs the Kostas Z Foundation, a Chicago

advocacy group for the disabled. He was injured in a 1995

car crash that led to the loss of both his legs, and says

that in the first few years that followed, he frequently

endured rude or tactless comments in his travels.

Today, by contrast, he says, employees at hotels and

airports are much more likely to take the initiative in

helping him with what he needs and make a greater effort to

make him feel comfortable. He has also been pleasantly

surprised by the efforts of some companies to move beyond

what is legally required by disabilities law.

At the Hilton Miami Airport Hotel where the Society for

Accessible Travel conference was held, for example, he was

picked up at the airport by a van equipped with a

wheelchair lift. When he arrived at the hotel, he was

accompanied inside by the driver, and the concierge handled

the check-in. (To be sure, given its guest list that day,

the hotel had a strong motive to take special care.)

Even so, he has a couple of suggestions for the hotel

industry. First, standardize equipment, so disabled

travelers can know what to expect wherever they go and will

not have to search elsewhere. Second, given that the small

number of disabled-accessible rooms are often all occupied,

widen the doors to the other rooms, install larger lighting

switches and mirrors and install movable sinks in more

hotels.

At the Miami convention, the Q Hammons Hotels were

honored for placing grab bars in the baths and showers of

every room, surpassing legal requirements, and the Microtel

Inn chain got high marks for advertising itself as " the

preferred chain for disabled travelers. "

Microtel trains all employees with the Opening Doors

disability etiquette program, said Roy Flora, the senior

vice president for franchise operations of US Franchise

Systems, Microtel's parent company. Mr. Flora said that

employees received training every time a new Microtel hotel

was opened and received annual or biannual refresher

courses at existing locations. The company is also

considering adding automatic doors at all locations and

fitness equipment for disabled travelers. Changes in

Microtel's Web site will allow disabled travelers to find

accessible rooms at specific locations.

Not every hotel chain believes that marketing to disabled

travelers will prove profitable. Tom Riegelman, vice

president of the Hyatt Hotel Corporation said there was

" low demand " for the hotel's accessible rooms and estimated

that only about one guest in a thousand request them. Mr.

Riegelman does favor a move to a universal design within

the hotel industry that would make all newly constructed

properties accessible to both disabled and able-bodied

customers.

" The good news is that companies are beginning to recognize

an important niche market, " said Ms. Duke of AC Duke

Associates. " They see the disability market as a hot new

trend, even though it's been around for years. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/17/business/17disabled.html

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