Playbook, holiday rental
A grandparent is coming and the stairs are the problem
Most holiday lets are conversions of buildings that were not designed for this, and a fair number cannot be made suitable at any price. The message that arrives is rarely a formal access enquiry. It is a daughter asking whether her father will manage, and she is trying to decide whether to book. The valuable answer here is often a refusal, said clearly enough that she books somewhere else and does not spend a week helping somebody up a staircase.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for accessibility requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A guest who discovers on arrival that the only bathroom is up a steep turned stair cannot walk out and find another room, which is why an accurate no before booking is worth more here than in any trade with a front desk.
- The obstacles in an old building are unusual enough that no standard access vocabulary describes them: a beam at head height, a stone step worn into a curve, a stair with a winder at the bottom, a threshold nobody can lower.
- Some properties have genuinely good provision, a ground floor bedroom with a level access wet room, and those owners lose bookings because the description mentions it once in a paragraph about the extension.
- The person writing is usually asking on behalf of somebody else, so the answer has to give them enough measured detail to make the judgement themselves rather than an assurance they cannot check.
How it arrives
- is there a downstairs toilet
- are the stairs steep
- is there a step up to the front door
- how low are the beams
- would a wheelchair get through the doorways
- is there a walk in shower or just a bath
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The building described honestly, with measurements | Step heights at each entrance, the stair including whether it turns or has winders, doorway widths, beam heights where somebody would hit one, thresholds, and floor levels that change between rooms. Numbers, not adjectives. A guest can decide from a measurement and cannot decide from a phrase such as fairly steep. |
|---|---|
| What is on the ground floor | Whether there is a bedroom, whether there is a toilet, whether there is a shower, and whether somebody could realistically stay downstairs the whole week. This is the question underneath most of these messages, and it deserves its own short paragraph rather than being inferred from a floor plan. |
| The bathroom in detail | Wet room or shower over a bath, whether there is a lip to step over, grab rails, the height of the seat, and whether the door opens inward. A bath with a shower over it is the commonest reason an otherwise suitable cottage is not. |
| The route from the parking space to the door | Gravel, grass, a slope, a gate, steps, lighting and how far it is. Guests who ask about the stairs usually have not thought about the twenty yards before them, and that is where a stay goes wrong on the first evening. |
The reply
I want to give you the honest picture rather than a reassuring one. The cottage has one stone step up to the front door and the only bathroom is on the first floor, up a stair that turns near the bottom, with a rope handrail on one side [1]. There is no downstairs toilet. Two of the beams in the sitting room are low enough that taller guests do catch them [2]. If somebody in your party would struggle with a turned stair several times a day, this property is probably not the right one, and I would rather say so now than have you find out on the Saturday.
It leads with the intention to be honest, because the reader is braced for a sales answer and that one sentence changes how they read the rest. Everything after it is a fact with a shape: one step, a stair that turns, no downstairs toilet. The conclusion is stated rather than left implied, since the reader wrote in precisely because they did not want to make that judgement from a photograph.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest asks for something to be changed or added for their stay, such as a bed moved downstairs, a stair rail fitted, a shower stool, or permission to bring equipment.
That is a change to the property rather than a fact about it, so it needs the owner. Leave me your name, an email and what you need, and I will send it straight over so they can tell you honestly whether it is possible.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never call a property accessible or suitable on the strength of a single feature, because that word carries an expectation the building will not meet.
- Never agree that a bed can be moved downstairs, a rail fitted or a piece of furniture removed, since only the owner can commit to work in the property.
- Never soften a measurement, because a stair described as manageable and a stair described as fifteen risers with a winder produce completely different decisions.
- Never guess at whether a wheelchair or a walking frame would fit through a doorway that has not been measured.
Questions
- Does saying the cottage is unsuitable lose us bookings?
- It loses you the booking that would have become a refund request and a review about the stairs. The bookings it protects are the ones where somebody with a bad hip reads the honest description and comes anyway because they now know what they are dealing with.
- We do have a ground floor room and a wet room. Can it say so?
- Yes, and it should say so precisely: which room, whether there is a step into the shower, doorway widths, and the surface between the parking and the door. Specific provision described specifically is what a guest is searching for.
- Can it decide whether someone will cope?
- No, and it must not try. It gives the measurements and the honest description, and the person asking makes the call. An assistant that reassures somebody into booking has made a decision about a stranger's mobility that it had no basis for.
Keep reading
- Everything for a holiday rentalWhat is provided, deposits and cancellation terms answer well. The exact address and the door code stay back until a booking exists.
- Handling accessibility requests in generalTwo different things arrive as one message. A published accessibility statement answers the first. The second is a request, and it needs a person.
- They have paid, they are not coming, and they want it backMoney already paid, a cancellation outside the window, and the difference between a refund and a credit against another week.
- The company wants an invoice and the balance is due in a fortnightA company paying for a cottage needs a proper receipt with the right name on it, and every guest needs to know when the balance falls due.
- Can we shift our week, and who is allowed to shift itChangeover days, minimum stays and a season change all constrain a date move, and a listing site booking is not the owner's to amend.
Try it on your own material
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