Expanding Your Market: Accessible Customer Service Practices for Hotel and Lodging Guests with Disabilities

Reservations

Staff working in central reservations as well as in individual hotel reservations offices need to know and be able to accurately inform potential guests about the accessible features offered in each of their facilities. Understanding what constitutes an accessible feature and how each feature serves guests with disabilities will enable staff to provide essential information to customers. Correctly answering a reservation inquiry about a hotel’s accessible features helps avoid an awkward or unsolvable situation when the guest with a disability cannot use the room that was reserved.

Once an accessible room is guaranteed to a prospective guest with a disability, an accessible room must be available to him or her upon arrival at the hotel. If an unexpected problem occurs that makes it impossible for the hotel to provide the accessible room promised, the hotel should make every reasonable effort to locate a comparable accessible room in the hotel or in another local establishment and cover cost differences, if they occur.