Ceiling Hoist user Community
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Hoists in hotels
By Nicolette Jacqueline Conway
I am severely disabled with Cerebral Palsy, I am non-verbal and I am age 61. I have friends all over England and Wales as I went to boarding school for eleven years. I learnt how to stand with the assistance of a care worker and be as manageable for one person as possible. I remember going camping and being helped up from the floor by one person and not ever thinking about the possible consequences to either me or the other person.
However times and people change and we need different things to adhere to the modern care legislation.
For the past fifteen years my social services have decided I have to be hoisted everywhere. I can still weight bare but I totally understand the reasoning behind the manual handling laws, as they protect everyone.
It is always a nightmare getting accommodation with wheelchair access for people who need to manoeuvre a self propelled wheelchair and can transfer without help. But have you ever tried to stay in chain hotels, or any public accommodation, with a severe disability, accompanied by a care worker who has never had to manage without their health and safety equipment requirements catered for?
It is a thousand times harder if you need a hoist in room. There simply aren’t many (if any) ceiling hoists available in the average chain hotels or any other public accommodation. For people like me, a few bars on the WC’s walls really aren’t of any use!
When I have asked the local adult services OT about how to get accommodation with a ceiling hoist, they don’t have any advice or information on this and suggest hiring a mobile hoist. They forget that mobile hoists are quite big and cumbersome to manoeuvre around by a single care worker. Also a lot of care workers are non-drivers. How on earth would they tote the service user, luggage, and a mobile hoist through train station, airport or streets, only to arrive at an accommodation to find there isn’t enough space in the room to manoeuvre the hoist. And, I think there has to be 2 care workers to use a mobile hoist.... This is yet another expense on the SU with a second room needed for the extra care worker. For many disabled people, this is just not affordable.
A couple of years ago I wanted to go to the Latitude festival because Duran-Duran were going to be on there. and it is an arty festival so I thought I’d love that. I knew I couldn’t camp anymore and so I found a Premier Inn a couple of miles from the festival. They obviously didn’t have a ceiling hoist, so I asked my new care agency to help start the call for ceiling/mobile hoists to be readily available in chain hotels as standard. The owner of the care agency said she would be interested in investigating this, but then she delegated it out to someone else and I got absolutely no where.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to go to latitude festival in the end!
If able-bodied people decide to go away on the spur of the moment, it isn’t an issue… However, if severely disabled people go away, it takes a lot of time and planning, and quite often we can’t find suitable accommodation.
Very often we incur double costs. It takes double arranging to ensure that you have the appropriate accommodation and accessible transport. Finding a mobile hoist to hire in the appropriate location is a real problem, and is another cost to factor in.
There needs to be one room with a ceiling hoist in every hotel in every town, every City, at no extra cost to the disabled guest. With an adjoining room for the care worker to have some downtime.
The ceiling hoists could be stored within a cupboard at one end of the track so the room could be used as a normal accessible room anyway.
But this needs to be in legislation. If they can legislate that care workers are not allowed to do any manual handling, then there needs to be the infrastructure to support this legislation.
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Inclusive Hotels Network (IHN) Hoist Guidance Document
The IHN Hoist Guidance Document has now been published and can be downloaded from our website. The document is a comprehensive best practice guide aimed at accommodation providers but also useful for anyone considering installing a hoist. It explains what a hoist is, the different types available , the business case along with some case studies of existing accommodation providers with hoists. It's a must read document for ALL accommodation providers. CHuC had a significant input to this document and we hope it will persuade more accommodation providers to install a hoist...or two...or three!
There is also a similar guidance for Access to Hotels for People with Hearing Loss that can also be downloaded from here.
Download IHN The use of hoists in guest accommodation 8Mb
Download IHN Access to Hotels for People with Hearing Loss 3Mb
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We need more hotels with a ceiling hoist
The government have recently announced another £30M in funding for an additional 500 Changing Places, these are toilets with a changing bench and a hoist available and can be found in many shopping centres, sports venues and public buildings. It is great news that the Government are investing in these much-needed facilities. To date there are almost 2000 Changing Places throughout the UK. https://www.changing-places.org/
However, what do all these changing place users do when they want to stay away from home? They are fighting over just less than 17 hotels that have an accessible room with a hoist! Yes – less than 17! Of these 7 are in and around London, 10 are around the rest of the UK including 0 in Scotland and 1 in Wales. The other 2 offer specialist disability accommodation and only offer weekly bookings. So that is just 15 mainstream hotels for 250,000 potential customers. The situation is dire. CHuC has been campaigning for hotels to install hoists since 2006. In that time hotels have come and gone and until recently the figure was down to 12. In the past few years hotels have opened in Liverpool, Manchester and Leicester which is great news but we need hundreds more!
Of these new hotels the Brooklyn Hotels (part of Bespoke Hotels group) in Manchester and Leicester offer state of the art rooms designed by Motionspot with a recessed track for the hoist which doubles as a lighting feature and when not in use. The hoist is shut away in a cupboard on charge and ready for use. A modern hotel room with a hoist doesn’t need to look like a medical facility any more.
CHuC wants to start a national campaign to get more hoists installed in hotels. It’s time for change! Please contact us if you can help organise a campaign to get more hotels to install a ceiling hoist.
Steve Catlin, CHuC (Ceiling Hoist users Community)
14 March 2025
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An open letter to all Hotel Managers, Execs, CEOs and anyone responsible for the hotel accessibility policies.
It is 2025 and the world is full of wonderful technology which is enabling people to do things that hadn’t even been thought of, less dreamed about 40 years ago. Some 49 years ago we put a man on the moon using what is now considered ancient technology, but we still did it. In 2025 disabled people who want to stay in a hotel just like any other human being simply can’t just because they need some technology to support them, namely, a simple electro-mechanical ceiling hoist to get them from their wheelchair to the bed and back again. Is that too much to ask in 2025? Why in 2025 are there less than 17 hotels in the whole of the UK and Ireland who can offer their disabled guests a ceiling hoist? Of those hotels, 4 are specialist ones offering holiday and respite care especially for customers with disabilities. Outside of UK&I we are aware of just 10 more mainstream hotels who can provide their customers with a ceiling hoist and 7 of them are in Las Vegas!
I believe that all the people that this letter is aimed at should spend just 1 of their working days accompanying a wheelchair bound hoist user going about their daily life. I am sure it would change their attitude towards disability – I know it did mine. I was once a person in the street who hadn’t really given disabled people any real thought. I may have held a door open or moved out of the way but that was about the extent of my involvement.
I then met the late Sue Maynard Campbell MBE, Managing Director of the Disability Consultancy, Equal Ability, and the founder of the CHuC website. After a few hours I began to appreciate the hurdles she had to overcome just to go about her daily life. I had never bothered about a 3” step up into a shop or public space. I could just lift my feet and step up but to Sue in her wheelchair it was a barrier that she couldn’t pass. I began to see these barriers all around. The environment has improved but still has a long way to go. Some of it is physical adaption but education of able bodied people who don’t need to consider these barriers is just as, if not more, important. Why would you do something to overcome these obstacles if you don’t see them as such?
It is the same for hoist users. They are just normal people who want to do normal things like visit friends for a weekend or go to a reunion or just get away for a break but they can’t find anywhere within 100 miles of their chosen destination that can provide them with a ceiling hoist. Is this really 2025?
Modern ceiling hoists don’t need to be bulky and ugly spoiling the aesthetics of a hotel room. Track can be recessed into the ceiling and can even have built-in lighting to act as a ‘feature’ when a hoist is not in use. A hoist can be shut away in a nice looking bedside cupboard when not in use, charging the battery, so it is ready for use when required. A hoist installation isn’t that expensive at around £6-8K, not much in the big scheme of things but it makes many people’s lives just that little bit better!
A ceiling hoist in your hotel can bring in a lot more income, especially if you have meeting and conference facilities. People will book your facilities for receptions, conferences or parties because you have the hoist. It would be a positive asset! One major hotel chain say they identified an additional £300K of income in the first year after installing a ceiling hoist through conferences, receptions and meetings which were booked because they had the room with a ceiling hoist.
Lastly a plea to those who already have hoist, and those hotels who may install one, to publicise it! So many websites fail to mention anything about their hoist or else it is tucked away in the small print of their accessibility page (if they have one!). Embrace it - get the message out and people will come – use it as a USP!
Let’s make 2025 the year the world changed for ceiling hoist users!
Steve Catlin
Manager CHuC Website
14 March 2025
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We need your help! Do you know of any other accommodation where ceiling track hoists are available for the guests? If so please
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The alternative to a ceiling hoist?
The HandiMove Wall Lift can be fitted to a bracket on the wall or on a floor to ceiling post and can be moved from room to room with additional brackets or posts. With a lifting capacity of 145kg and a maximum reach of 1.3m this is the alternative to a fixed ceiling track hoist so now you can install a fixed hoist even when the property has a low ceiling. It is available in UK from Dolphin Mobility, Lindale Healthcare and Lynch Healthcare. It is also avalable throught Europe, Israel, South Africa, Australia and USA.
