For most couples, the wedding night is envisioned as a romantic escape into a luxurious suite, a celebratory conclusion to months of stressful planning. However, for wheelchair users, that long-held dream is frequently an exercise in frustration. True wheelchair-accessible suites are exceptionally rare in the hospitality industry—critics often describe them as being slightly more prevalent than unicorns. Even when these premium rooms do manage to appear on a hotel’s inventory, they routinely feature the exact same frustrating accessibility barriers that plague standard-sized ADA room types, ranging from missing shower seats and beds set at unreachable heights to heavy, unassisted doors that are nearly impossible to navigate independently.
The scarcity of these premium accommodations raises critical questions for disabled travelers and the hospitality industry alike: Why are wheelchair-accessible suites so rare, and are hotels legally required to supply accessible upgrades when a guest requests or books them?
For John Morris, founder of Wheelchair Travel, these questions transitioned from academic inquiries to a personal ordeal following his own wedding. After exchanging vows, Morris and his partner, Stevie, checked into a Junior Suite at the Marriott St. Louis Grand. Finding even that room required exhaustive searching; it was virtually the only accessible suite they could locate across the entire city of St. Louis, outside of an Arch-view suite at the Four Seasons Hotel that far exceeded their established budget, or extended-stay options like Embassy Suites.
The couple had high hopes for their stay at the Marriott. Boasting a prime downtown location, the property appeared pleasant enough, despite clear visual indications that its rooms were overdue for a comprehensive interior refresh. The accessible suite itself was fair at first glance, but it harbored one critical, glaring exception—a fatal flaw that completely upended their wedding night experience and turned what should have been a celebratory milestone into a deeply disappointing ordeal destined for a scathing review.
The primary issue centered on the hotel’s accessible room equipped with a bathtub. Rather than providing an ADA-compliant bathtub seat, the hotel had substituted a piece of equipment that grossly violated federal standards. Under the ADA Standards for Accessible Design, bathtub seats are legally required to be either permanently affixed to the structure or removable, but specifically engineered to be capable of secure attachment. Portable, unattached plastic shower chairs featuring four independent legs do not possess the structural capacity for secure attachment within a tub, rendering their use a direct violation of federal accessibility regulations.
Instead of a compliant setup, the Marriott St. Louis Grand provided a portable, unattached chair, a hazard that was further compounded by the fixture’s flawed orientation. Because of the chair’s built-in grab bar configuration, it could only be positioned backward, forcing the user to face entirely away from the handheld showerhead and the primary water controls. Compounding the physical danger, the chair completely lacked rubber leg tips. As a result, the exposed metal legs slid uncontrollably across the slippery bottom of the tub, aggressively scratching the porcelain surface while creating an extreme fall risk for the guest.
Late-night staff on duty were apologetic when informed of the situation, but they admitted that nothing could be done to improve or replace the setup at that advanced hour. Consequently, the grossly insufficient shower chair provided by the hotel rendered the bathtub entirely unsafe and functionally inaccessible for the remainder of the night.
When Morris later emailed hotel management to detail the distressing experience, the Room Operations Manager offered a formal apology for the inconvenience and disappointment encountered during the stay, particularly acknowledging the unfortunate timing on such an important life occasion as a wedding night.
Not content to let the safety violation pass unaddressed, Morris pressed further up the chain of command, seeking the direct attention of the general manager in the hope of securing concrete, actionable steps to permanently rectify the systemic accessibility barrier. To his credit, the general manager responded swiftly, offering direct assurances that the specific ADA compliance issues would be immediately addressed, starting with the procurement and installation of properly certified, ADA-compliant bathtub seats.
Morris noted that they intend to return and test the validity of that promise in the future. Despite the severity of the compliance failure, however, no financial compensation or goodwill gesture was offered for the troubled experience. The couple ultimately paid the full market rate of approximately $375 for a specialty suite featuring an unusable and inaccessible bathtub.
