Philip Quinlan

I am a C6 complete quadriplegic having broken my neck in an accident in 1999. I was always a keen traveller before my accident having back packed around the world for two years after university. In total, I've visited over 40 countries worldwide. Since my accident I've travelled just as much.

However, even with a huge amount of research I've never found a website that caters for my needs specifically.

With that in mind myself and my business partner Senan Sexton have set up DisabledFriendlyHotels.com.

We aim to provide all the accessible information necessary so that even the most disabled person can travel with peace of mind. We have 33 criteria (see homepage) that each hotel on our website must fill out so every disabled person who books a hotel room on our site will know exactly what to expect when they get there.

The hotel must supply measurements where necessary and also photos of the accessible bedrooms and bathrooms.

We rely upon your reviews to act as the reference for all our users. This way your information will then inform other disabled travellers about how accurately the hotel has assessed its disabled facilities. This will create a meritocracy whereby the hotels that are most disabled friendly will generate the most business.

We aim to show the hotel industry that instead of just doing the minimum regarding accessibility why not do the maximum so as to attract disabled guests to stay again and again and make more money for themselves in the process.

Finally, please send on any good hotels recommendations you have so I can approach them to see if they would be interested in uploading their disabled rooms on DisabledFriendlyHotels.com.

Senan Sexton

Having travelled with Philip extensively, I have witnessed the problems encountered by the disabled traveller.

DisabledFriendlyHotels.com is about creating solutions to these problems and the free sharing of accessible information.

The first major problem to overcome is the current inability of the travel industry to offer automatic booking of a disabled friendly / accessible room. Our booking portal resolves this problem and provides automatic confirmation of disabled friendly / accessible rooms.

The second major problem is the immense difficulty of creating a "one stop shop" for worldwide accessible information. Instead, we have created a free to use social network (DFH Connect) so that persons with similar disabilities from all corners of the world can exchange accessible information on where they live or places travelled to.

You do not need to make a hotel booking with DisabledFriendlyHotels.com to use DFH Connect although it helps if you do.

We post information on general accessible topics in our Blog and we have a Supplier Directory where we list user suggested accessible equipment and service providers.

 Sowmya Raghavan

I am an MBA graduate and in the past, I worked at a large telecoms company and I bring with me close to a decade's experience in creating, managing and deploying customer service and business processes.

I was intrigued by the challenge of getting a grip on all the workings and processes of the travel industry.

DisabledFriendlyHotels.com is highly specialised and provides sufficient accessible information on the hotel and promotes the free sharing of highly specific accessible information through a social network (DFH Connect) and a Supplier Directory.

In short, DisabledFriendlyHotels.com hopes to improve people's lives and I am proud to be involved.
Philip has travelled the world dealing with a lot of problems along the way and I am inspired by his can do attitude.

For me, DisabledFriendlyHotels.com is challenging perceptions and norms.

The community of people needing our service is growing and I feel there is a huge demand out there waiting to be explored.
I urge you to register as a user, join DFH Connect and be a part of this change.

WebServiceCenter

We thank Roman and the team at WebServiceCenter Group for their development work in bringing this project to fruition.