04 February 2008

Copyright Michael Coatesworth.

Last revised: February 04, 2008

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Hello, I'm Mike Coatesworth

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My "First Hand" experiences with Disabled Access

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Wheelchair Access

Cala Millor Garden Hotel

Cala Millor

Majorca

Cala Millor Garden hotel is wheelchair friendly but…?

I had checked up on this hotel through the Internet and it boasted that it was completely wheelchair friendly, so I decided to find out “first hand” whether this hotel was all it claimed to be. I booked myself a room and flew out to Majorca.

On arriving at the hotel, at first I was not too impressed with the open scrubland in the near distance. The hotel itself appeared okay and as I ascended one of the two ramps available, I entered the hotel and advanced to the reception desk. The staff were very friendly and suggested that before we book in that we have our lunch which was at the time being served. So leaving our luggage under the watchful eye of the receptionist we headed for the dining room.

The Dining room was on the same floor as the reception area and was completely wheelchair friendly, but the food being served, was average, nothing exceptional.

After our meal we checked in and headed to the wheelchair friendly room that we had booked. The room was quite spacious and clean and I could get out on to the balcony with no problem. On checking the bathroom I found a wheel in shower with no grab rails, but it had a shower chair that was fixed to the wall, and before I had a chance to use it, I found out that two guests had accidents, one was hurt badly when their shower chairs came away from the wall, so I decided not to use that and used a hired shower chair instead. The toilet was a little low, but it did have a fold down support bar on either side. The sink was a little high for me. Beside this, the room was okay, there was plenty of room to get around. As for the cleaning of the room, I found that although the beds were made up on a daily basis, the actual cleaning of the floor and dusting was light and only on as once a week basis and the balcony was never touched. I deliberately left a little rubbish on the room floor and a little on the balcony. Although it was two days before the rubbish was picked up from the room floor, the rubbish was still on the balcony two weeks later when I left!

I hired a disability scooter to get around, but unfortunately it wouldn’t fit into the lift so it had to be left and charged up in the reception area of the hotel.

I decided to explore the hotel and the first call was to the indoor swimming pool that had a hoist for disabled guests. The hoist was not a modern piece of equipment, but it served its purpose and when I tried it out a few days later I found it adequate, but there was no supervision in the use of it, and my daughter had to figure out how to use the equipment without any available instruction, nor was there any lifeguard in case I got into difficulties.

As I took a tour of the hotel I found that the majority of the guests were German and only a handful of British. On noticing that there was no Union Jack alongside the other flags, I was informed that the hotel catered for a large portion of Germans, and as there were only a few British, it didn’t warrant putting up a Union Jack. So when I spoke to other guests I had to brush up on my Deutsch.

I looked for a hotel wheelchair friendly toilet and was informed that there wasn’t one. There was a toilet behind the bar near the outdoor swimming pool, and it was large enough for wheelchairs, but there were no grab rails and at night the area was quite dark and I did not feel safe in visiting it, so when needs must, I went up to my room

Everywhere else that I visited in the hotel was wheelchair friendly. The one thing that I did notice whilst I was there, was the lack of speed from the cleaners when it came to clean up areas of spillages, and quite often outside tables were full of discarded half filled cups and plates and other minor rubbish that were left for a couple of hours or more before being cleaned up. The hotel had an outside bar-b-que lunch and after the meal there was food all around the floor of the terrace area that was left until almost the time for the evening meal.

As for the day time activities at the hotel, I must state that I was not impressed at all. There was a lack of enthusiasm amongst the entertainers, too many guests turning up for one activity, which meant that as there was a time schedule, and after waiting almost half an hour in the blistering heat, each guest got only one turn.

The entertainment at night was held either inside the hotel or outside in the newly refurbished stage. I was also not impressed with the night entertainment and appeared to be cheap and tacky, certainly not entertaining, especially with some of the entertainers not being able to speak understandable English.

Overall, yes, the Cala Millor Garden hotel is wheelchair friendly, and the staff are friendly, but there was a lack of support rails and grab rails, and there was the dubious wall shower chairs. Although edible, I was not truly happy with the food which in my opinion catered mostly for the German guests. I was more than a little bored in the hotel and when I tried to have an afternoon doze on the terrace, the entertainers turned up the volume on the music and much to the annoyance of a lot of the guests around, blasted everyone. On more than one occasion my daughter went and asked them to turn it down. The cleanliness of the hotel was not up to the standard that I would expect of a three star establishment.

Mike Coatesworth

Recommendations

Raise the toilet bowls in the bathrooms

Lower the wash basins in the bathrooms

My Rating for Hotel Cala Millor Garden

Independent wheelchair access on ground level: 8/10

Assisted wheelchair access on ground level: 10/10

Wheelchair Access in Accommodation (Bedroom): 9/10

Wheelchair Access in Bathroom / Toilet facilities in accommodation: 9/10

Bathroom / Toilet facilities on ground level: 4/10

Food: 5/10

Customer service: 8/10