Hotel calls it a wet room but the photos look like a shower tray with a lip, will my shower chair actually roll in?

Booked a hotel in the Lake District for my birthday week and the listing says "accessible wet room". They sent photos when I asked, fair play to them, but the shower looks like a low tray with a raised edge round it. Maybe 3 or 4 cm? Hard to tell from a photo.

I use a wheeled shower commode at home that my OT sorted. I can't step over anything. Is a lip like that going to be a problem or can a commode bump over it? I've got ten days before the free cancellation runs out.

I've been caught by exactly this. "Wet room" in a listing means nothing until you've seen a tape measure in a photo. Mine was a 5 cm lip and the castors on a shower chair just hit it and stopped. Ask them to put a tape measure against the edge and photograph it.

Also ask about the floor gradient and where the drain is. We had a "level" shower once where the water just ran across the bathroom floor into the bedroom because the slope went the wrong way. Not a safety thing for the chair but it meant a towel barricade every morning.

Brenda1958 said:

can a commode bump over it?

Brenda, I would not plan on bumping a shower commode over a lip of that height with you sitting on it. Shower commode castors are small, and a raised edge of 3 to 5 cm is exactly the kind of obstacle that stops a chair dead or tips the weight forward unexpectedly. A genuinely level access shower has a floor that runs flush into the showering area with only a gentle fall to the drain, and that is what you need to confirm.

So Derek's advice is the right one: ask for a photograph with a tape measure standing against the edge, and ask in writing whether there is any lip, step or tray at all. Also ask for the door width into the bathroom and the clear floor space in front of the shower, because your commode needs room to line up square rather than at an angle. If they offer a mobile ramp or a shower chair of their own instead, that is not the same thing as level access, and whether either would work for you is a question for your own OT, who set up your equipment and knows your transfers.

The site's list of questions to ask before booking has the exact wording for this one, and accessible accommodation explains why "wet room" and "roll-in" are used so loosely.

Tape measure photo came back. 4.5 cm. They said "most of our guests manage fine", which I now understand is the reply you get when the answer is no. Cancelled and found a guest house down the road that sent a photo of a flat floor with a drain in the middle and a tape measure showing the doorway at 85 cm without me even asking for it.

"Most of our guests manage fine" should be printed on a mug. Happy birthday for when it comes, Brenda.