This summer, my team and I had the pleasure of
hosting the Brazilian Paralympic team training camp ahead of the Paralympic
games in London.
It’s a project that we have been working on closely
with various stakeholders including the city council for a number of years and
one which culminated in more than 300 athletes, officials, coaches and press
descending on the Macdonald Manchester for much of the month of August.
We believe that we’re one of the only hotels in the
world to have ever hosted an entire paralympic squad of
this size. You can imagine that this
posed some logistical challenges and following two separate site inspections
over the course of 12 months a number of adaptations had to be made to public
areas and bedrooms.
This was a great learning curve for us since we
already believed ourselves to be well fitted out for guests with
disabilities; we are after all fully DDA compliant. What the visits highlighted to us is that
there is also the human aspect to take into consideration and I would recommend
that if you are serious about welcoming guests with disabilities to your venues
as we should all be, don’t just rely on a set criteria or framework and tick
some boxes. Speak to local groups and
get them into your venue, you might be surprised what they tell you.
Now that the team have gone and the Games are over,
our own Paralympic legacy will be that our hotel is better equipped than ever
and our staff are more aware and engaged than ever when it comes to the needs
of disabled guests.
We can say that not only are we fully DDA
compliant, but that we’ve also successfully hosted almost 200 Paralympians with
all the challenges that that brings. I’m
pleased to say that the feedback from the Brazilians was positive and we
now look forward to putting our expertise to use once again soon.
Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
