11/13/2024
Ever spent over 3 hours on the phone trying to book a hotel room??? Well, we just did on our road trip. If you’re a wheelchair user or are a caregiver to one, you may very well relate to this story. This *ridiculous* story…
A month before our visit, Charisma books our stay at a very nice hotel in Celebration, FL, close to our family who we’re visiting. She specifically books an accessible room with a roll-in shower (RI). I have to have an RI room, otherwise I won’t be able to shower during our stay. They had one available, so we grabbed it! All is well.
A common issue with staying at hotels, however, is that rarely will our RI room be guaranteed, and even when it is supposed to be guaranteed can we actually count on it. Therefore, we follow up. Multiple times.
The day before we arrive, we call to check on our reservation. They assure us that our RI room is available and guaranteed on our booking. All is well.
On the day of our drive we wake up at 4am to drive from VA Beach to Orlando. That’s about a 12 hour drive. Once we’re about 3.5 hours away, we call to check on our room for the third time. And, you guessed it, our RI was not available, and never was. Why, you ask? Because the entire floor with the only RI rooms in the entire hotel was BEING RENOVATED!!!
Unreal.
This is why we call multiple times, and why we’re always prepared to be turned away. The hotel said the best they could offer was “an accessible tub.” In my world, there is no such thing as an accessible tub. So, essentially, they turned us away.
We’re about an hour into our phone call at this point trying to find a solution, growing ever closer to Orlando, and we have no place to stay. Eventually, we end up being transferred to another hotel, who, after we were left on hold for another half hour, we hung up on. We call a third hotel, and they have no RI rooms available at all, instead recommending to us a fourth hotel.
We’re now 2.5 hours into our call, about 45 minutes away from Orlando, and finally this last hotel has a RI room available. Great! Right?
But wait, there’s more…
Because we first booked with our points, and the refund wouldn’t restore those points for like 48 hours or something, we then had to call the first hotel back to then wait on hold while the first hotel called the fourth hotel to make the arrangements. Ridiculous, I know.
Eventually, we are booked and guaranteed our RI room with about 15 minutes to spare, having been on the phone for over 3 hours on the tail end of what ended up being 14 hours on the road. And if this seems like a very whiny post, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. We’re at our wits end when it comes to hotels regularly screwing this up.
Charisma and I have had multiple professional engagements with hotel chains discussing this very issue. It’s very discouraging, then, to see the lack of progress. The progress we have seen is the ability to have an RI room guaranteed on your reservation, but, as this situation has abundantly shown, there’s no way to ever be sure.
People who need specific rooms to accommodate them should not be burdened with having to call ahead multiple times. Policies need be put in place, and employees need to be trained on accessibility so that this does not continue happening.
We want to be part of some solution, but man, does this feel like a constant uphill battle…
