According to Laurent Roffe, CEO of Tapooz Travel, a disability travel company that conducts bespoke tours for groups to both domestic and international destinations, hotels often lack the accessible features that his clients need. Roffe provides his hotel partners with a list of affordable accessibility products and equipment that can improve the experiences of disabled guests.
“Following our conversation about making hotel rooms more comfortable for guests with disabilities using simple, off-the-shelf (meaning mostly Amazon) pieces of equipment, here are the basic 13 items any hotel manager should have available.” Roffe told us. “Hotels often keep them in storage until they are put in the rooms before the guests check in. And the best part is that most items can be purchased from Amazon for under $50 and the entire kit will run $1,194.62.”
They are the very same items that his trip leaders carry with them when they take groups on road trips. All these are easily and cheaply purchased from Amazon.
For a surprisingly small investment any hotel can make a huge difference in comfort and satisfaction for the guests.
Our take: Travel companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their clients and are often the first to identify niggling annoyances that may or may not fall under ADA compliance, but make the experience profoundly unpleasant for people with disabilities. TravelAbility would like to thank Laurent, who is also a member of our advisory board, for sharing this information.
13 Items Than Can Make Any Hotel Room Accessible
(Shared by Tapooz Travel)
| Product | Price | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Bathtub Transfer Chair | $204 |  |
| Shower Chair | $41.09 |  |
| Raised Toilet Seat | $39.77 |  |
| Foldable lightweight ramps (4′ & 6′ Suitcase style) | $109.00 |  |
| Adjustable Step-Up (4/6/8”) | $33.99 |  |
| Door Threshold Ramp (2) and/or step over | $99 |  |
| Curtain Pull Rods (with round grab) | $29.90 |  |
| Stand alone Mirror (with and without light) | $17.99 |  |
| Hand-held shower head (to replace regular shower head) | $26.99 |  |
| Quick adapt shower head (goes straight on the spout) | $9.99 |  |
| Bed transfer slide board | $37.99 |  |
| Movable grab bars with lockable suction cups. (short, medium and long) | $27.99 |  |
| Heavy duty plastic mats (36″x48″ / set of 6) For high-pile carpeting to create a solid path-of-travel for manual chair users | $59.95 |  |
OUR TAKE: Because travel companies like Tapooz have a fiduciary responsibility to their clients, they are often the first to identify nuances in accessible sleeping rooms and bathrooms—i.e. showers and curtain cords that may be out of reach—that make travel annoyingly unpleasant for people with disabilities. All or some of these products can be used as an interim solution by hotels between renovations. TravelAbility would like to thank Laurent, a member of our advisory board, for sharing this information.
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