I just read this entire thread and as a frequent traveler and HH Gold member I feel that I should tell my experience. I travel quite often for work and due to my disability I am in a wheelchair. No where on the Hilton Honors profile does it ask if you NEED a wheelchair accessible room it just list that as a room preference. Well this is something that I NEED in order to get in and out of the bathroom. The bathroom doors in a non-accessible room are often less wide and my wheelchair cannot fit in. I frequently have stayed at the DT in Little Rock and on SEVERAL occassions when I made a reservation online and request as my preference an accessible room, I have gotten to the hotel to find that they had me on the HHonors floor in a non accessible room and that none of the accessible rooms were available because other guests were in them. Once they walked me over to another hotel of much lower quality. The other time they just said that there were no room available and that they could not find me another hotel to stay in so I was out of luck. Now I should say that I was staying at this particular Hilton property once a month for at least two days or more while in Little Rock for business. This went on for almost a year. I always made the reservation online and then had to call the hotel and get assurance that I would be given the wheelchair accessible room. I was sad to see that NONE of the rooms on the HHonors floor were wheelchair accessible. Granted I was always allowed to use the HHonors floor facilities such as the manager's reception and the breakfast buffet. The front desk manager said that they were not certain that I just wanted the accessible room for the extra bathroom space or if I indeed did need the room for the accommodations it provides to someone with a mobility impairment. I think HHonors needs to make a place in the profile where you can designate that you have a specific need for an accessible room and not just a desire to have one because the bathroom is larger.
Once when I was staying in Washington DC I had a reserved accessible room...or so I thought...only to find out that my room was given away before I arrived and they had no other wheelchair accessible rooms available. They of course had plenty of non accessible rooms available in this instance but I cannot use those rooms. It took a hotel maintenance man to suggest having me go up to the JR. Suite and see if I could use the bathroom in there because he felt the bathroom door in there was wide enough for me to use...and indeed it was. Luckily for me they did upgrade me to this room at the regular rate I was staying in.
When I was younger and in college I played wheelchair sports. Often we ( a team of 10 wheelchair athletes) had to deal with the fact that no single hotel would have enough wheelchair accessible rooms to accommodate us. Often we'd have to find ways around the inaccessble rooms and adapt. The ADA requires a certain percentage of rooms in hotels to be accessible for people with disabilities. As a businessman I can understand filling all the rooms in the hotel with paying guests. It is just ultra frustrating to find out that someone who does not have a disability is in a room that is designed for people with disabilities, especially when I have reserved a room that is wheelchair accessible with a credit card.
If I were not disabled I would not book a room designed to specifically meet the needs of people with disabilities. Now if I was given one of these rooms I would be certain to let the hotel management know that I am more than willing to switch into any other available room if someone who has needs that this room was specifically designed for does show up.
That being said. I am lucky that I do not have an extremely severe disability that leaves me to be a quadrepeligic. I have and will continue to give up priority seating on planes, or hotel rooms for someone who has a more severe disability than myself.
Nothing annoys me more than when someone who does not have a disability sees me coming and uses a rest room stall that is designed wider so that my wheelchair can fit in it. I've seen tall men use these stalls for the extra leg room and I've seen overweight men use these stalls too. Now I don't mind if a person who does not have a disability uses these facilities if there is no one waiting, however, when you see someone waiting and you use that facility when it's the only one that a person with a mobility impairment can use and someone with a mobility impairment is waiting to use the rest room then I do have a major problem with that. I can't tell you how many times someone has climbed over me to get to the accessible bathroom stall and they did not have a disability. I have incontinence issues as do many people with disabilities who are paralyzed and we cannot always hold out and wait for you to read "War and Peace" while stretching out your legs in comfort to finish.
The ADA mandates a certain percentage of parking spaces and hotel rooms be made accessible for people with disabilities. ( There are many more issues set forth in the ADA but these are the one's that are being brought up here in this thread) As our country's population is getting older with first generation Baby Boomer's now looking to retire we need to make this world a barrier free environment. For those businesses that do not make themselves more accommodating to people with dsabilities you are missing out. Our population overall is getting older and many of these people will develop medical issues as they continue to age. Those businesses that do not make themselves more friendly to people with disabilities are going to have a tough time competing with those who do meet the needs of people with disabilities as our countries population continues to live longer.