An Interview with Royal Caribbeans Director of Disability Inclusion. Catalyst Ex Software more. I constantly recommend cruising as the most accessible way to travel. Its convenient and there are many possibilities for destinations to visit on a cruise. While I have always loved cruising Ive gone on six cruises so far, I have frequently had questions about accessibility on ships and how to improve it. Recently, I reached out to my favorite cruise line, Royal Caribbean, and they put me in touch with their Director of Disability Inclusion. I was able to have an in depth conversation with him about accessibility issues in the cruising industry, and it was a huge eye opener for me. I learned a lot from our talk and Im sure that you will learn from it too. If youve ever had any questions for Royal Caribbean, hopefully they are answered below. I tried to ask him what I thought all of you would want to know. Here is my interview with Ron Pettit, Director of Disability Inclusion, and Celia, a Public Relations Coordinator at Royal Caribbean wheelchair accessible royal caribbean cruises. Seven-stages-lifecycle.png' alt='Managing The Guest Experience In Hospitality Ebook' title='Managing The Guest Experience In Hospitality Ebook' />Cory What is your name and your role at Royal Caribbean Ron My name is Ron Pettit and Im the Director of Disability Inclusion and I mediate compliance for Royal Caribbean Cruise Limited. Theres no need to make a big deal about leaving every gathering you attend. Just leaveits fine. Last week, the entire Lifehacker staff convened in New York. Table Tracker is a restaurant table location system that identifies where guests are sitting so you can deliver food faster. Enhance the guest experience with Table. Dr. Richard Bandler is the CoFounder of the field of NeuroLinguistic Programming. A distinguished visitor to Menningers Foundation, a Keynote Speaker for many. Lord Of The Rings Conquest Full Game Pc. Managing The Guest Experience In Hospitality Ebook' title='Managing The Guest Experience In Hospitality Ebook' />I am also responsible for the overall accessible experience for three of our global brands, which are Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Club Cruises. I think for the purposes of our call today, well speak primarily about Royal Caribbean International, but Im happy to talk about the other two brands if youd like. Cory Yeah, if there is any information you want to throw in about Celebrity Cruises or the other cruise line that will be great. I have actually only cruised with Royal Caribbean, but I am always eager to learn about any cruise lines. On Royal Caribbean ships though, how many accessible rooms would you say that there are on average Ron Thats a really good question. All of our ships have accessible staterooms on the Royal Caribbean International brand. We start at four accessible rooms for our Empress of the Seas and Majesty of the Seas, which are obviously older ships and we go all the way up to Oasis class ships, which includes Harmony of the Seas, our newest ship, as well as Symphony of the Seas, which is coming up next year in 2. Both ships have 4. Many of our inside cabins now have virtual balconies which is a new feature that weve added to our ships. So they also have a view of the outside as virtual balconies. On our Oasis class ship, many of our balcony staterooms have a traditional balcony that overlooks the sea, but we also have balcony staterooms that overlook Central Park and Boardwalk. So weve got some rather unique accessible staterooms. We have, on Oasis class ships, an accessible suite. Most of the suites on our ships are junior suites but within the suite category, we have several different types of suites so on our Oasis class ship, we have what we call a Crown Loft Suite, which is a two story urban loft suite and normally there are stairs to get to the upper level. This accessible suite has an elevator that helps guests get to both levels of the suite and also theres a bathroom on each level. The bathrooms are accessible, so again going back to kind of what we do at Royal Caribbean, we put in a lot of thought into the types of accessible staterooms. In a lot of categories, the accessible staterooms occupy you know, third and fourth guests and are really great for families. We also have accessible rooms with connecting doors to another stateroom so that if youre traveling with kids or a caregiver, you have a stateroom with a connecting door but the door itself is not accessible, its just one of those small doors, but you can still have it between the two rooms. So weve got a lot of really great accessible stay options for our guests. Accessible inside stateroom on Royal Caribbeans Serenade of the Seas. Accessible bathroom on Royal Caribbeans Serenade of the Seas. Cory Okay, great. Thanks so much for that information Aside from the state rooms, Ive been on about five cruises so far, but Ive never really noticed accessible pool lifts on cruise ships. Maybe Royal Caribbean offers them on some ships, but Im not sure. So my question is do you guys have that and if not, do you plan to put them on more ships in the future Ron Yes, we have lifts and there is at least one pool lift and one rolling pool lift. Going forward, were expanding and adding more lifts so the eventual goal would be to put a lift in each pool. Some of our newer ships have sockets. But while we have one lift, we can move the pool lift from one pool to another to provide options for our guests. Were still working on getting lifts for every pool, but at a minimum, we have one pool lift and one rolling pool lift on every ship. Cory Okay, awesome. I wasnt aware of that and thats really good to know. I know you mentioned maybe in the future that it would be in every pool, do you have any kind of idea of when that could possibly be by Ron There is no timeline right now, were kind of still in the investigations phase because at Royal Caribbean alone we have 2. Celebrity has ten. So we have several ships to assess and kind of make sure that we can do that. We just know definitely that there are some pools with one pool configuration that either one, we wont be able to do because of the way they are designed or two, its going to take quite a bit of effort to do. So were still in the investigations phase of figuring that out. So unfortunately there is no timeline yet. Celia To kind of carry on with what Ron was saying in terms of the timeline for putting a lift at every pool, I just want to point out that the cruise ships are ships that go for revitalization every five to ten years and something like a pool lift would have to be done during a revitalization. So its not like we can just decide to do it all by next year and it will be done. We kind of have to work within a certain framework which is obviously very different from the type of land based hotel or kind of hospitality setting, which you may not have been aware of so, I just wanted to get it into context for you. Cory Okay great. Well, thats got into my next question actually, so in the accessible rooms, I mean theres things like roll in showers and the bathrooms are really large on the Royal Caribbean ships that I have stayed in. Have you guys ever thought about adding anything such as ceiling hoists, which would allow the wheelchair user to get out of their chair and into the bed or even like automatic doors that could be opened with a button or something like that Ron So lets talk about automatic doors, so apparently they are available on accessible rooms on Radiance class and Quantum class ships. We are again looking at the feasibility of adding them to other existing ships and again, its kind of like the pool lift question. Again theres no timeline yet because were still in the investigations feasibility stage and were kind of going through that process now, so the timing is good, but unfortunately were still in the process of evaluating. We do get a lot of great feedback from our guests about that and so we are really looking hard at trying to make that happen on our existing ships. We do have automatic doors in public areas. Rar Key Serial Number on this page. We find that to be really helpful. We also have automatic doors to the public restrooms.