With the Olympics and Paralympics only a few months away it is more important than ever that the Hospitality industry in London has the right service levels and training in place to deal with disabled visitors to the Games.

Campaigners at Action on Hearing Loss have both produced a report following a ‘mystery tourist’ survey by people with hearing loss who visited London attractions, and have carried out mystery telephone surveys on Hotels within the M25 area this year.

Mystery telephone survey of hotels

As this research is unpublished we will just give some of the overall findings as well as mention some of the less helpful responses received by researchers as they phoned around hotels and spoke to reception staff.

Overall Conclusions
Of the 232 hotels contacted within the M25 area:

• 55% (128) said that they had hearing loops at Reception
• Of these 128 hotels 97 said that they knew how to use it
• 78% (178) could offer some subtitles
• 91% (208) said that they had a method for alerting hard of hearing guests in an emergency but with 30 hotels this involved flashing lights which are not appropriate as the guest may be sleeping.
• 59% of Hotels could not offer an alternative method of contacting reception and 12 hotels actually suggested using the emergency disabled pull cord/button.

On the whole the researcher’s requests were dealt with professionally and they only got the occasional response like these replies:

“but how can they come and stay with us if no-one is with them, how can we be expected to understand them if they can’t communicate properly” and

“if he can’t hear he won’t understand us so we can’t do anything”

Probably the most concerning part of the research were some less than helpful emergency procedures at hotels when the researchers asked how the Hard of Hearing guest would be notified. One said:

“obviously if there is an alarm then everyone vacates, then when we know its safe we can check the rooms but we can’t help him otherwise”

Whilst another reassured the researcher:

“The alarm is very loud it wakes everyone up”.

15 hotels could offer no alternative to the fire alarm going off whilst others offered to phone the room which is rather self defeating if the guest cannot hear the fire alarm. Other hotels said that a member of staff would visit the room in an emergency but it was not always clear that staff had been adequately trained in these procedures.

For instance at one hotel the receptionist was unaware of the evacuation procedure, so the researcher was put through to the manager, who said it was the reception staff who would collect guests with hearing loss in an emergency.

Tourist Attraction Survey

In June 2011 hearing loss volunteers carried out a mystery tourist survey of 20 top London attractions in order to see how prepared London was for serving hard of hearing customers in 2012. In general they found staff helpful but encountered practical barriers. For instance:

• Of 13 ticket offices 6 didn’t have electronic display of price.
• Lighting was good in 18 venues
• The volunteers need face to face contact with receptionists in order to lip read and this was satisfactory in 16 of 20 locations
• In 9 locations background noise was an issue
• Volunteers thought that staff were “deaf aware” in only 6 out of 20 locations
• 11 locations advertised having loops but only 7 had them and in only 3 cases were they satisfactory.
• 11 volunteers went on guided tours and only 2 were offered equipment, 7 of the others became tired and frustrated with the tours, as they had to rely on lipreading. Therefore only 4 out of 11 in total thought that their guided tour was fully accessible to people with hearing loss.

Overall the volunteers felt that they were at a disadvantage compared to someone without hearing loss at 18 of the 20 attractions.

Action on Hearing Loss campaigner Johanna Taylor said:

“While staff were overall welcoming and tried to help, they often weren’t sure about provision for people with hearing loss.

However since sharing the results with tourist attractions we have had an incredible response and many attractions are now working closely with us to improve their provision”.

London attractions that have already taken action include:

• London Eye has installed new loops at 7 customer facing points
• London Aquarium is installing new loops
• Tate Modern & Tate Britain are installing new loops and reviewing staff training.
• National Gallery is looking at making their existing tour guide equipment compatible for hearing aid wearers.

If you are a Hotel or Attraction seeking further advice on this subject please contact Johanna.Taylor@hearingloss.org.uk

In addition further information can be found at www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/accessible