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Is your hostel wheelchair accessible?

The Ideal Hostel

Josh started this discussion 9 years 7 months ago

I had this question come up recently and was wondering how many hostels out there are wheelchair accessible.

If so, it is the private rooms or dorms as well? (I'm guessing that the dorm rooms would have to be mid-sized.) Are the bathrooms and showers also accessible?

None of the hostels that I worked at were, but I'm hoping that some out there are...

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Rucksack Brian

9 years

Sadly my hostel is not wheelchair accessible, although we are considering installing a ramp at the front of the building so that at least part of the property would be.

I recently visited Tattva Design Hostel in Porto, Portugal. They had elevator access to upper floors, a roll-in shower in one of the private rooms, and a chair lift up to their rooftop terrace. I'm not sure if any of the dorms were also accessible or not.

We have only ever had one guest in a wheelchair as far as I can remember. Do other hostels see a lot more of this?

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John Moriarty

9 years

By law we have to be in Ireland. It has to be 1 in every 20 rooms have to be wheelchair accessible. Our doors are wider for this bedroom as well as a wheel in shower and seat in the shower. While the bathroom is wheelchair accessible we still don't have a ramp at the front of the hostel. The hostel is on the ground floor so we don't need an elevator. While I do think it is great that businesses are accessible to people with wheelchairs for us in Ireland the regulations really are tough to comply with for smaller businesses. With the costs so high for entry it plays in to smaller hostels not opening. This is unfortunately my believe with most regulations that it really only benefits bigger business who have the capital for the initial outlay. Sorry maybe I am going of topic. Anyway this is a photo of our wheelchair accessible bathroom.

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JAY

9 years

By The law I have to accessible in France too. Same 1 per 20 rooms.
I am renovating the ground floor to create 2 new accessible rooms.
It s a very difficult subject, especially in an old building and on Montmartre hill (40 cm different between top and bottom of the building).

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Josh Hostels

9 years

Great bathroom. I can imagine that it is expensive to renovate.

I recently had a difficult time finding a hostel for a friend, because the hostels that were accessible in that city just had one line of text about it on their sites. He mentioned that sometimes a place will call itself "accessible", but that there still could be a step, or other obstacle, somewhere in the building that blocks the wheelchair.

This one has 260-beds, and it's purpose-built, so it's possible that a large part of the building is accessible, but the only place that the text about wheelchairs appears is here. It would be easier to find a place like that in search engines if they had a dedicated page with a title like: "Wheelchair Accessible Hostel in [city], [region], [country]"

It got me thinking about the topic.

I also found this interesting article while doing research.

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