WWYD - Butlins - no accommodation for disabled parents so they had to come home

[JellyStarb]

I've just discovered that my parents have arrived home after setting off at 12pm to go to Butlins for the week.

On arrival, they were given keys to a third floor apartment. My Mum uses a mobility scooter and absolutely cannot do stairs. She was told if she wanted ground floor she needed to have paid for it. No ground floor apartments were available and so my parents returned home, a very long 9 hour round trip in the car in total.

They have said they would refund but were very blasè.

I dont agree that they should have paid more for ground floor accommodation as thats discrimination as its a need so yhe person who said that is likely ill-informed.

I've looked online to go through the booking process as my Mum and Dad have gone for years without issue and never had this. The website has a small link for accessibility accommodation but at 73 my Mum wouldn't have seen that when booking amongst such a busy page and trying to navigate the tech. My Dad is in his eighties.

AIBU to think they could have done more? But what? I don't want to be unrealistic but how can they just allow people who have travelled so far to have to leave?!

Is this tiny link on such a visually busy page really sufficient?! Its not at all inclusive or user friendly for older generations trying to live in a modern world, surely a page as part of the booking process to register any needs would make more sense and be a catch-all?!

Rooms are usually allocated the night before. I know with Minehead they send out an email with the room number and location. As your parents are not new to Butlins surely they would have realised a room starting with 1 or 2 (e.g 105, 204) is not going to be ground floor and perhaps what they should have done is called customer service first thing in the morning to ask then if they could be moved to ground floor, presumed this arrangement was already in place and hoped that out of good will for a mistake Butlins could help move them to a suitable room. This would have saved them the long journey.

I agree with you. I’m disabled but don’t use a wheelchair. I can’t do stairs but I would always book an accessible room and not just assume it was free. Especially if I had been going to the same place for 20 years

Yes, Butlins is not at fault for not having an accessible room for OP's parents when they didn't request one. So the OP has no grounds for complaint.

But OP would have no grounds for complaint against Butlins if they had simply given her parents a list of local hotels for them to contact.

No, there's no requirement for them to go to those lengths. But faced with an elderly couple who had travelled a long way, I would say the decent thing to do would have been to at least give them a list of local hotels - they didn't need to recommend one. There's a Premier Inn in Skegness and most people would think that's likely to be fine.

This elderly couple are compos mentis. If they aren't, they shouldn't be out on their own. So one assumes they are equally capable of finding a local hotel if that is what they wanted to do.

But of there was a problem it could come back on the employee/Butlins
"You recommended this place so you are responsible for the fact we got robbed/they ripped us off/we got injured"

No-one would seriously think that if Butlins refunded them their money, and they then booked at a hotel that turned out to be problematic, they would have any cause to complain to Butlins about the hotel.

Or if they did, then the general public is stupider than I think they are.

OP is blaming Butlins for not booking her parents an accessible room despite her parents not booking an accessible room and actively ignoring all the chances to BOOK an accessible room....

I don't think it's a question of whether they are fully compos mentis or not. There are degrees of cognitive and coping abilities among people who are perfectly capable of being out on their own, but might struggle to cope if things go seriously wrong. I noticed this slow decline over the years in one of my parents.

Giving them a list of hotels printed off of Trip Advisor constitutes "recommending" a hotel?

Well, yes... but surely even the OP wouldn't blame Butlins if they gave her parents a list of local hotels and they picked one and had a bad experience?

You obviously haven’t worked with the general public, the entitlement can be off the scale!

But if you want accessible accommodation you do need to book it, some disabled people don’t need accessible accommodation. They obviously booked the wrong room, can’t blame butlins for that, they can’t magic space

I do work with the general public. You've obviously had far worse experiences than me.

I've appreciated the times when someone has gone above and beyond to help me.

A relative of mine told me that when she was a child in the 1930s, she went with her mother to a family funeral many miles from home. On the way back, they got on the wrong train and ended up late in the evening at a station in the middle of nowhere, on the wrong line. The station master got an engine and a carriage to come to the station, and take them to where they could get a train home.

Wouldn't happen nowadays, of course...

I used to work in a shop (most people probably did at some point at school) and some of the stuff… yea. I had someone come in with the cardboard off a plastic gift card/voucher. You know you buy a gift card and it has a card wrapper with a cute design and the shop branding. They had ripped the card off and chucked it in the bin and kept the cardboard. They tried to use that to pay and when I said the plastic gift card is the voucher, this is just the wrapper so i couldn’t use it to pay, they went apeshit. So far as emailing our head office to claim I had personally stolen from them.

The general public are thick and rude. I’m sure OP would try to blame butlins if they gave an alternative hotel and her parents messed that up to.

Yes.
You chose which ones to give them
Some people would blame it on the receptionist/Butlins

She's already blaming them for something that isn't their fault

They didn't have to do it, but wouldn't it have been helpful if Butlins had done it nonetheless? Especially as they are an elderly couple?

Your parents made a mistake and didn't book ground floor accomadation so it wasn't avaliable.

Could butlins been more helpful - probably.

However there is loads of accommodation in Skegness that is accessible. Bit stunned your parents didn't think to try a premier inn etc

They don't make it automatically part of bokking process as you do get idiots who try to book disabled adapted accommodation so they think they can have more room but don't actually need the facilities

When you go into book. It offers you the choice of ground floor room

There is a cheaper option that very clearly says that Butlins choose the room for you. I suspect that is what they did.

Travelling with someone with a disability takes an extra level (or 6!) of planning. That includes ensuring the place your going is aware and accommodation is suitable.

Receptionist is likely on minimum wage and has received minimal training.
I haven’t heard of a printed list of hotels since about 2010. If the receptionist is young as well as being hardly trained, then the thought would never occur to her. Plus print off a list from tripadvisor it won’t have phone numbers on it and somewhere like Premier Inn it’s almost impossible to contact a specific one by phone.

Lets not forget that Butlins offers these low prices that people were talking about earlier and therefore the expectation from those staying should not be at Ritz level.

Plus they were probably arguing night was day with the receptionist like OP did earlier. It was an utterly ridiculous decision to turn round and drive all the way back and it was nobody else’s fault but their own.

I agree - and even then it can go wrong. At which point you have to politely but firmly double down on getting something sorted that people can live with. Speaking as the person with a disability who travels all over the world, often alone.