Raindrops Are Falling ...

Joe came out of the bathroom with a worried look on his face. At our age, this could be serious, 'There's water coming through the ceiling,' he said. We called the front desk who called an engineer who came a half an hour later. He went into the bathroom and came out saying that he could hear dripping right through the entire ceiling. Then we got called by the front desk manager, then others were at our door. We'd have to evacuate the room. I was already in my housecoat and my chair was disassembled (it had it's legs off) ... the hotel chair was up on elephant feet. We were in 'tired but relaxed' mode.

They found us another accessible room and we got stuff over there, not all of it, the new room was much smaller and they hoped to get us back in our original room the next day. So we managed. Half our stuff there, half here, finding constantly that we'd brought the wrong half of stuff. In the morning, we were busy getting ready for work. We asked at the desk and they were pretty sure we'd get our big, lovely, room back by late morning.

So we moved back in and I got another evening watching television sitting on my chair with elevator feet. It all went smoothly.

OK.

Here's why I'm writing this post.

Shuffling from one room to another, back and forth, is inconvenient. But, when the hotel staff does all they can to be of assistance, when they explain that they are worried for our safety, when they assure themselves through conversations with us that the new room will be as accessible as the old room, when they use great good humour about the situation - it doesn't have to result in any conflict or annoyance at all.

They thanked us for alerting them to the problem and for being patient with the moves.

We thanked them for handling it all with care and humour.

It was all good.

You know what I want as a traveller with a disability, just what I got here, good customer service.

Not every traveller has a disability but every traveller has special needs, unique needs, needs that when met take some of the jarring out of sleeping in someone else's room. When staff understand that, when staff enjoy meeting those needs, taking into consideration disruption and reducing the chaos, anything can happen and you still feel at home.