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AITA for refusing to share my accessible hotel room with an older relative?

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For a family reunion, I booked the only accessible hotel room because I use a cane and need the walk-in shower. My seventy-eight-year-old aunt booked a standard room upstairs.

The elevator failed on arrival day. Staff offered to move my aunt into my ground-floor room if I switched upstairs. I refused.

My aunt can climb stairs slowly but found the trip painful. She missed breakfast the next morning rather than come down twice. Relatives said I was younger and could manage the stairs with help.

I said the shower and handrails were why I reserved that room months earlier. The hotel’s failure did not make my access need optional.

There was another possibility: sharing the room, which had two beds. I rejected it because I had paid for privacy and my aunt snores. She ended up sleeping in a relative’s room on the ground floor while that relative took hers upstairs.

I was right not to surrender the accessible room. I am less sure that refusing to share it for one night protected access rather than comfort.

Discussion

5 community replies

An accessible room is not a perk assigned by age. You booked features you needed and were entitled to keep them.

Sharing one night could preserve both people’s mobility needs. Privacy and snoring were real costs, but smaller than her stair pain.

Sharing was generous, not mandatory. The family should direct pressure at the hotel rather than ranking disabilities.

Did the hotel offer compensation, a rollaway or another ground-floor space before asking guests to solve its failure?

Support your aunt’s complaint to the hotel and ask for refunds without apologizing for keeping the accessible features.

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