VisitEngland has estimated the value of the stay away from home market for disabled people at £2billion. However, a recent survey by the new online training resource for hotel staff called AccessChamp has found that hoteliers have a long way to go to provide great customer service to disabled guests.
Hotels rated just ‘OK’ or ‘poor’
The research, conducted with 276 members of Disabled Motoring UK during 2013, and written by Arnold Fewell, Managing Director of AccessChamp, highlights that many disabled guests find facilities or services in hotels as just “OK” or “poor”. Hoteliers are a long way from providing an outstanding service to this valuable market.
Only 10% of hotel bedrooms are currently meeting the needs of disabled people and only 39.8% of respondents were asked for extra information when making a booking. This is a simple and low cost way of enhancing the disabled guest experience. For example taking furniture out of the room for a wheelchair user and placing a blind person in a room with a dimmer switch so they can adjust the light to meet their needs.
The research findings showed that 60.4% of respondents described bathroom facilities as just “OK” or “poor”, while 59.8% said the same about the location of their room in relation to, say, reception. The report also cited layout of room, availability of car parking on arrival, accessibility to a disabled toilet in a public area, room facilities, and access to the bar want improvement.
Disabled people should receive the same level of service as non-disabled people
“Some of these issues should have been tackled already under The Equality Act, the others will only cost small amounts to improve,” commented Fewell, who hopes that the findings will help hoteliers improve their service to disabled guests further by concentrating on key issues.
“The 2012 Paralympic Games showed the inspirational quality of disabled people,” he continues. “Every day in the UK, 25% of the population deals with a disability, either as a disabled person or as a carer. Surely, in this day and age, disabled people should receive the same level of service as non-disabled people. That is why it is concerning to see in this research the current situation of customer service that disabled people are receiving in hotels. It is a long way from excellent but now we have a benchmark to measure against.”
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About AccessChamp
AccessChamp is a new online training resource about accessibility for hotel staff. It is designed to give staff more confidence when dealing with disabled people, and help them to provide great customer service. With 25% of the UK population being either a disabled person or a carer, the training resource was launched to help hotels maximise the £2 billion market opportunity as identified by VisitEngland.