Austin, Texas, hotel adds autism-friendly rooms

From USA Today:

A Wyndham hotel has started catering to families traveling with autistic children, making it one of the few in the USA but an early adopter in what may be a growing trend.

The Wyndham Garden Hotel in Austin, Texas, two months ago opened five specially equipped, "Thoughtful rooms" designed to make stays less stressful for families with autistic children. A door alarm, for instance, alerts adults when the door is opening, which could prevent a child from quietly opening the door and wandering out of the room.

The Wyndham is believed to be the second hotel in the USA to offer an autism-aware program, and an official with a leading autism advocacy group says the concept is a good idea.

Peter Bell, executive vice president for Autism Speaks, said he hopes that other hotels will catch on - and, in fact, he plans to contact national hotel chains about rolling out autism-friendly rooms more broadly. "That's a great idea," Bell wrote me in an email.

Autism is a complex neurobiological disorder that typically lasts throughout a person's lifetime that can include varying degrees of impairment in communication skills and social abilities, according to Autism Speaks' website. Autism is believed to affect some 1.5 million Americans and the rate is believed to be growing by at least 10% per year.

Tony Sahyoun, the Wyndham hotel's general manager, and Anna Roberts, the hotel's sales manager, developed the hotel's special, autism-aware approach together with the Austin-based Thoughtful House Center for Children, an autism research center that's located nearby. The special rooms have been requested 48 times, in some cases repeatedly by the same families who are visiting the center, Sahyoun told me.

The Wyndham Garden Hotel in Austin, Texas, in April 2010 rolled out an unusual program that caters to families with autistic children. The five specially eqiupped rooms have touches such as a specially selected array of toys and books, as well as child-proofed drawers.

The designated rooms contain special safety features such as door alarms, corner cushions on tables, childproofed drawers, shortened strings on blinds, special toys and books and outlet covers on all power outlets, Sahyoun told me.

The hotel's restaurant also contains special menu items with gluten-free, casein-free and soy protein options for children with special diets, he said.

For Wyndham Garden Hotel, the idea started with a conversation with Thoughtful House officials who'd told him that hotel stays for families with autistic chidren can be stressful. Until then, he hadn't realized the community had special travel needs, Sahyoun told me.

The Wyndham Garden Hotel in Austin, Texas, in April 2010 rolled out an unusual program that caters to families with autistic children. The five specially eqiupped rooms have touches such as a door alarm to prevent children from walking out of the room undetected. The hotel also offers some gluten-free and casein-free snacks and restaurant food.

When Sahyoun said Roberts first raised the concept inside the hotel, staffers immediately embraced it - in some cases, for very personal reasons. Management discovered during the early phase of the process "that several of our staff has direct family members who are autistic and can relate to what we were attempting to assist with," Sahyoun said.

The hotel's staff also underwent training by certified Thoughtful House staff, and Thoughtful House provided most of the activities, Sahyoun said. He said they know "we couldn't be all things to everybody," but they continue to solicit feedback from their special-needs customers and when possible adapt to improve their stay the next time.

Last December, the Clinton Hotel in Tenafly, N.J. began offering a special hotel suite for families with autistic children, according to the Record of Hacksensack, N.J. At the time, the hotel was believed the first to offer such a program.

In the case of the Clinton Hotel, general manager Tony Morreale came up with the idea based on his own experience taking a family vacation with his young austic son, the article says.

"We stayed in a nice hotel, but it was a disaster," Morreale told the newspaper last December. "He just didn't want to be there. He wanted to be where it was a familiar environment that he knew."