Better design to improve the hotel experience for disabled and able-bodied guests
Introduction
Bespoke Hotels Access Awards 2016
This competition, now in its second year, is an international design competition which seeks original ideas to improve access and provide an enhanced experience for hotel guests, particularly for those with disabilities. Peers in the UK House of Lords initiated the competition, which continues to be managed by RIBA Competitions.
Aims
The competition aims to employ good design to re-imagine the welcome that hotels extend to guests with physical disabilities and learning difficulties, with the aim of making the hotel experience more joyful and inclusive.
Scope
The scope of the competition is wide-ranging. It seeks to identify and reward the best innovative ideas from the fields of architecture and interior design, product design and service design.
Ideas
Ideas could address the experience from pre arrival, to the front door, to any room or service within a hotel, and can include any of the processes that have to be gone through before a guest arrives or checks-out.
Lastly we have added The Leonard Cheshire Award for Inclusive Employment in order to consider those that work within the hotel environment.
International Competition
The competition is international and open to everybody. Individuals, groups and design professionals of any age are all eligible. The competition organisers welcome particularly entries from designers and architects with disabilities. Entries will be assessed anonymously.
Prize
A prize fund of £30,000 will be available for award at the discretion of the judges. An overall winner will be awarded the Celia Thomas Prize.
Brief
The Bespoke Access Awards aims to release designers’ imagination and suggest innovations or improvements that could bring joy and pleasure to the experience of hotel guests, especially those with disabilities. The competition is not about improving current regulations, rules or standards that may apply in any particular country (although these may change over time as new ideas are adopted).
Competitors may like to consider the following questions as a stimulus to their design ideas:
What sort of welcome do hotels provide for those with disabilities?
What has been your experience of staying in a room set aside for those with disabilities?
What do you feel about products or facilities in hotels designed particularly for those with disabilities?
How can the persistent ‘medicalisation’ of designs for disability be overcome?
How can the detailed design of hotels be made more inclusive from the start of the architectural process?
What systems or processes need to be improved, before the experience of hotels can become more joyful for everyone?
How can staff training enable them to interact in an appropriate way towards guests with disabilities?
Four strands of design have been identified for competitors to consider.They are (1) architecture; (2) product design; (3) service design and (4) design for employees with disability.
Fees
The competition is subject to a non-refundable registration and administration fee of GBP £50+VAT.
Deadline sumissions 8th January 2018
