Hotel keeps insisting the room is wheelchair accessible but WON'T send me the bathroom door width, is that a red flag?

Right, so I've found what looks like the perfect place for a week in the spring, ground floor, sea view, and the listing has that little wheelchair symbol on it and the words fully accessible in the description. Great. Except every time I email to ask one simple thing, how wide is the bathroom door, I get back a lovely warm reply that says "don't worry, the room is fully accessible for wheelchairs" and never once gives me the actual number.

I've asked three times now. Three. Politely. And I still do not have a measurement. Am I being difficult here or is this exactly the kind of thing that turns up as a step and a shrug when you arrive with your bags and no way to change it?

What I don't even fully know is what number I'm supposed to be listening for. My chair is a fairly standard manual one. What door width actually lets a chair through, and is there a difference between the door itself and the gap you actually get? Because I have a horrible feeling I'm about to pay a non refundable deposit on a bathroom I physically cannot get into.

Derek you are not being difficult, you are being sensible, and the dodging IS the answer. I learned this the hard way. A place that can get you a real measurement will get you one. A place that keeps repeating the word accessible at you instead of a number usually cannot, because nobody there has ever put a tape measure to it.

The other thing I'd say, and it's the mistake I made, is don't lean on that little wheelchair icon on the booking site. I filtered a whole search on "accessible" once, booked something the filter swore was fine, and turned up to a wet room with a lip you'd have needed a run up to clear. The filter is a self declared tickbox, nobody checks it. Get your own numbers.

Oh the step and a shrug, I felt that in my bones Derek. Ours wasn't a door, it was the shower, they'd called it a wet room in every email and it had a good two inch lip round it that my husband didn't spot until he'd already carried the cases up.

My tip, and everyone here will have said it a hundred times but it's gold, ask them to send a PHOTO of the bathroom with a tape measure held across the doorway. If they won't or can't, that tells you everything. A genuine place is oddly happy to do it.

Derek C. said:

is there a difference between the door itself and the gap you actually get

Derek, let me answer the blunt version first: a place that will happily type the word accessible but will not put a single measurement in writing is giving you a real answer, and nine times out of ten that answer is no. The good ones send numbers, or send someone to go and measure. So trust your instinct here.

Now the vocabulary, because it will make you much harder to fob off. The number that matters is not the size of the door, it is the clear opening, which is the actual gap you get when the door is open flat against the frame. The door leaf is always a few centimetres wider than the clear opening once you lose the hinge and the door thickness, often 4 to 5 cm, so if someone quotes you the door size, gently ask for the clear opening instead. A fairly standard manual chair sits around 60 to 70 cm across the wheels, and most people find they want a clear opening of about 80 cm to get through without barking their knuckles, with 75 cm the tight end where you are folding your elbows in. Powered chairs and scooters run wider again. Inside the bathroom the second number is turning space: to spin a chair round you want something close to a 150 cm clear circle, and a lot of "accessible" bathrooms are really a standard room with a grab rail screwed on and nowhere near that.

On the shower, this is where Brenda got caught and it is worth being precise. Level access, sometimes written roll-in, means the floor runs flat straight into the showering area with no lip at all. A wet room is not automatically that: plenty of wet rooms have a small upstand or threshold of 2 to 4 cm to keep the water in, and even that low a lip can stop a shower chair or a small front castor dead. So ask specifically, is the shower level with the bathroom floor or is there a lip, and how many centimetres. While you are at it ask the bed height, because a lateral transfer is far easier when the bed roughly matches your chair seat height rather than towering over it. The full list I paste for exactly this is in the questions to ask before booking, and the wider picture of what separates a real accessible room from a hopeful one is in accessible accommodation.

Two honest exceptions so I am not painting every hotel as dodging you. Some genuinely good places have front desk staff who simply do not know the numbers off the top of their heads; the fix there is to ask them to have maintenance or housekeeping measure it, and the willing ones will. And in older or historic buildings you sometimes find a portable ramp kept behind reception for a threshold, which can turn a no into a yes, so it is worth asking whether one exists rather than assuming.

Where I stop: what clear opening YOUR chair actually needs, what threshold height you personally can manage, and whether a given transfer is safe for your body are not things I can size for you from here. Those belong to your own OT or physio, who know your chair and your transfers. I can tell you which numbers to demand. What those numbers mean for you is theirs to judge.

Just to add the money side, since Derek mentioned a non refundable deposit. Before you pay anything that you can't get back, I'd get the key measurements in an email, in writing, not on the phone. If it later turns out the room is nothing like what they told you, an email saying the clear opening was 80 cm and the shower was level is worth a great deal when you're asking for your money back, and a cheerful phone call promising "it's all accessible" is worth nothing.

One more that caught us out: it was ground floor so no lift worry, but do check if an accessible room is up a lift whether there's a plan when the lift is out. We got stranded a floor up for most of a morning once. Not the end of the world but not the holiday feeling either.

Update, and it's a mixed one. I went back a fourth time and asked exactly what you all said, clear opening not door size, and whether the shower had a lip in centimetres, and asked for the tape measure photo. Suddenly got a proper reply: door clear opening 78 cm, which is fine for me, and a photo. So far so good.

But the shower answer came back as "there is a small step but it is very low," and no number, even after I asked twice. So I'm back to the dodge on the one thing I can't compromise on. I'm not paying the deposit yet. Taking the 78 cm and the "small step" photo to my physio this week to see what she reckons I could actually manage, because that bit is above my pay grade. Might be a yes, might be a walk away. At least I'm asking the right questions now instead of just hoping. Will report back.