OPENING DOORS

When AtkinsRéalis travel lead Adam Hickingbotham started building an accessible hotels programme for disabled travellers, he had already anticipated one challenge: hotels claiming they are accessible when in reality they are not.

But Hickingbotham, the engineering and design company’s category manager for UK support services, soon encountered a second significant hurdle. Many hotels which do have genuinely accessible rooms fail to upload their availability in global distribution systems, thereby making them invisible on self-booking tools.

“We were looking to launch the programme mid-year but then we came to this stumbling block, so we have paused it,” he says. “We don’t want to launch a programme that is half-online and half-offline. It will definitely be this year but it’s a big frustration because we could have launched by now. We are not giving up. It is down to the hotels to load the accessible rooms and we are working with them to resolve this issue.”

Hickingbotham was inspired to create the hotel accessibility programme by Victoria Jones, global vice-president for equality, diversity and inclusion at SNC-Lavalin, AtkinsRéalis’ parent group.

“EDI is massively important for our company,” says Hickingbotham. “AtkinsRéalis wants to be a leader for change and Victoria’s values are to weave EDI into everything we do. I asked myself what we could do in the travel category to push barriers and really help people, and realised the hotel market isn’t where it should be around accessibility. There are a couple of colleagues who have had really bad experiences,” he explains.

One example was a wheelchair user who arrived at a hotel that boasted of its accessible rooms only to discover the building had to be entered via steps from the street. “He ended up not being able to stay there,” says Hickingbotham.

AtkinsRéalis, working with its travel management company Agiito, has added mandatory questions to its hotel requests for proposals that clarify more precisely what is meant by accessibility. Examples include main entrance access, the width of bedroom doors and specific bathroom facilities. “The people who actually stay in these rooms are going to be our voice,” says Hickingbotham. “It’s an ever-changing programme which will be relying on their feedback to grow.”

After verifying which hotels did offer truly accessible rooms, “I said to my team, ‘Let’s have a look on the GDS just to ensure these rooms are on there,’” Hickingbotham says. “I was so surprised: hardly any were available to book.”

Hickingbotham contacted hotel company account managers to enquire why they did not display accessible rooms. “We shouldn’t have travellers who feel like second-class citizens because they can’t book something online when others can,” he says.

Some hotel companies responded by making the necessary changes. Others have not. Reasons given include a lack of staff and a risk of accessible rooms being booked online by guests able to use standard rooms. “But what’s the difference between that and someone phoning up to ask for an accessible room?” Hickingbotham asks. “Hotels don’t quiz someone about why they need the room,” he adds.

If hotels prove unwilling to load accessible room availability, they will remain in the general AtkinsRéalis hotel programme, along with properties which cannot be made fully wheelchair-friendly. But, says Hickingbotham, “I don’t want them to be part of our accessibility programme because the whole point of it is signposting people to those hotels which meet all our criteria.”

The response from colleagues with disabilities to development of the accessibility programme has been extremely positive. “They are really, really pleased that people are thinking about them,” Hickingbotham says. He is piloting the programme in the UK before an eventual global roll-out.

Hickingbotham also intends to challenge hotels to think more comprehensively about accessibility. Examples for wheelchair users include lower desks at check-in, while bedrooms need reachable clothes hangers, safes and power points. Another requirement is alarms: vibrating pillows for visually impaired people and flashing lights for the hearing-impaired.

“I want hotels to look at their accessible rooms and consider whether they are really fit for purpose,” he says. “Little things like windows where the levers are at the top. How are you supposed to open the window if the room is hot?”

He hopes other travel buyers will join him. “I want people to copy it. We don’t want it just to be an AtkinsRéalis thing. We want it to be an industry thing,” says Hickingbotham.