Hotel policy: People with disabilities should travel alone

[elf]

I'm at Escapade, which is being held in the LAX Four Points Sheraton, which has a fascinating arrangement for ADA-compliant rooms: they only have them in single-king rooms, not rooms with 2 queen beds. I'm rooming with one person who's currently stuck in a room with two beds; I drove down with another who opted for the single king bed version--and was told she'd have to pay extra for a rollout bed.

Both of these people reserved rooms with two queens, and checked the box on the website requesting a room with disability access. Both of them have mobility problems that mean it's very unsafe to bathe without bars in the tub to hold on to... and this hotel, unlike many of them, has no safety bars in the standard bathrooms.

After asking around, it seems this has become a common hotel policy: they apparently don't want to "waste" the more valuable double-queen rooms by making them accessible and pulling them out of the general-use pool of rooms. People with disabilities are not offered the option of rooms with two beds--AND they're no told this when they reserve the room. They are informed when they reach the front desk that they have a choice between sleep and bathing; they don't get to have comfortable and safe arrangements for both.

Anyone know a good ADA lawyer?

Comments

[sasha_feather]

The convention committee can liaise with the hotel to let them know that their guests are unhappy. Conventions bring business to a hotel, and as such have some power: they can say, hey, if you don't fix this, we could bring our business elsewhere. So, the chairs of the convention, and/or the hotel liaison, should bring this up with the hotel, in my opinion.

[elf]

We're in touch with the concom, which is amazingly supportive. (Escapade is in its 25th year, and is about 125 people; this is more like a weekend slumber party that's too big for anyone's house than a convention.) However, talking with the people at the con who regularly attend in wheelchairs, this has apparently become a common hotel policy.

[jesse_the_k]

That stinks.

The U.S. Dept of Justice has litigated and settled a whole bunch of hotel-related cases in the past three years. A quick search at ADA.gov showed the only Sheraton settlement was about kicking out service dogs. BUT if you can
1. search on hotel
2. skim the results for California
3. you'll find an ADA lawyer who's up on the issues.

Also good news: the DOJ has finally put up an online ADA complaint form
http://www.ada.gov/complaint/

[lilacsigil]

Gee, that links up well with the airlines that only allow disabled people to fly *with* a carer!

[davidgillon]

*Headdesk* How to transform access into disablism, and all in pursuit of squeezing the most money out of the people likely least able to afford it.

[elf]

I suspect there's an amazing class action lawsuit waiting for any law firm that needs a big project, especially considering the number of people with disabilities who were pushed into "king bed with a rollaway on the side--for an extra $15/night" so their caretakers would be able to share the room at all.

I'd seen plenty reports of trouble with accessible rooms at hotels; I hadn't realized that many hotels don't offer them at all to people who need two beds.

[elf]

Well, of course they can have a carer! They just need to pay an extra fee for a (small, lumpy) rollout bed on the side!

They shouldn't have kids, of course. Everybody knows that.

[princess]

My guess is that even if it can't get traction on the single bed issue, the having to pay for an accommodation for a carer (medical necessity) is an angle. They can't charge extra for a service dog, so the charging for the rollaway seems effing suspect.

[davidgillon]

And God knows how much extra for the 'privilege' of the single room in the first place! People are actually being overcharged twice over for receiving legally mandated access provisions.

[elf]

The king rooms are usually a lower cost than the two queens, or the same -- more people want two beds, so that's why they use the single beds for accessible rooms: they don't want to pull the more popular ones from the pool of rooms available. (Of course, once they've labeled a room accessible, they couldn't possibly rent it to someone who didn't ask for an accessible room. Because why would they ever have more than the minimum legally-required number of accessible rooms?)

In the cases I've been told about, the rooms were all part of a convention rate package: all the rooms are the same cost; the hotel just doesn't bother making accessible rooms with two beds.

I suspect that the right kind of noise at the registration desk would either get:
1) a handful of burly staffers to swap some beds around, or
2) two single-king rooms next to each other, one of them accessible, for the price of a single room.

But that would probably take both a lawyer at hand, skill with asking harsh questions/making pointed comments without sounding shrill or "unreasonable," and a talent for raising one's voice in a way that every customer in the lobby could hear it.

It'd probably be easier to push them into a rollaway for free--but it'd take some noise, and a lot of people don't have that after grueling travel, even without dealing with disabilities.

The annoying part of all this, for us: plenty of hotels have safety bars in *all* the bathrooms, and that's all that would be needed to make this room work for my friend. The other people at this con with disabilities may need more extensive arrangements that really require a different room setup (wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, etc.), but a few basic features would go a long way toward making rooms more usable by everyone.