Hotel Hell
I spent yesterday (after having not slept since the morning prior to yesterday morning) making my way from North West England to Galway via rail and ferry. After a long 16 hours of solo travel, first getting into the hotel felt like it would be bliss, the feeling though didn’t last.
I booked an accessible hotel room, I’m an electric wheelchair user. I get the keycards, and within a short time I realise the accessible room is in quite an inaccessible place! The corridor leading to it has a set of narrow double doors which aren’t even accessible if you have a hand free to open one, I had to wrestle with my feet and luggage and on the other side with my elbow to get to that room.
Things didn’t get better from there. The room door was so heavy I had to leverage my luggage to push it open with my case in front of me and my chair, also to avoid the door closing onto my arm which was dragging said luggage if I’d entered normally, as the door doesn’t have a way to keep it open whilst I enter.
I get in, and nobody told me I needed to put a keycard into a little slot on the wall to enable any electricity, and that slot was hidden behind the bathroom door, with no labelling to say what it even was.
I look in the bathroom, and there’s no fold down seat or shower stool for the shower. By this point I desperately needed the toilet, and that’s how I discover the toilet seat is so narrow and horizontally short, that unless I’m leaving things on the toilet seat, I’ll be soiling the rear of the toilet seat during use.
I at this point start to give things an extra precautionary once over, and I find the meta sockets and lamps stained with brown spots, and with some whitish grubby buildup which can be removed with a light scrape of your fingernail.
The main bin had no bin bag despite brown gunk being in there.
I try to turn on the TV, turns out after staff investigated that it wasn’t turned on at the back, because I’d already made sure to check the remote was flashing at the end to transmit signal, and got on the floor and felt up behind the desk to see if the socket had a switch to flip but I could feel none. There was also a loose reading light at my bedside that wasn’t attached to the wall properly, the fixture was slightly dangling off.
I can’t wash myself, use the toilet, or independently enter and exit the hotel without pain from wrestling the doors as I take a couple of knocks. I’m now left having to see what I can find that’s bookable from tonight onwards for just over a week, and is actually accessible.
Staff did find a shower chair, it was below the wardrobe rail and I thought it was a clothes rack, I’ll comment a photo of it folded.
I really thought I’d get here after the massive slog of a journey and be able to just breathe a sigh of relief and know I’m at least in a place I can function for the next week and a bit, but unfortunately not. I just broke down crying to be honest.
Update (another part of this update in a separate comment on my own post): Nox hotel are going through the booking agent I used to issue a refund, and on the phone lines finding alternative hotels for me trying to get one that’s available from tonight. That’s what I hoped for at least happening, and they’ve been quite apologetic and friendly, just shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place with inaccessibility in an advertised as accessible room.
Update 2: they got staff on the phones and found an alternative, and secured a good will discount from the alternative hotel, and I’ll get refunded, though annoyingly not for the night I was essentially forced to stay because I had no alternative at like midnight. 75% satisfied.
Comment reaction update: Oh my god guys, you found the model roughly of the luggage rack to confirm it was far from a shower chair, I dodged a bullet by not even bothering to try sitting on it, thanks a bunch!
Update 3: The admin lady who booked the new hotel told me “it’s only a 5 minute walk away”, and I check google maps later as I’m ready to leave (after waiting around for new check in time to come closer), it turns out to be an hour away if I’d have walked
Update 4: hotel is absolutely perfect, the bathroom is fully accessible and the door wasn’t as heavy to the room, and it’s really spacious. I’d recommend the Clayton to physically disabled people definitely.